City. Night. Bursting.

Look, I know I shouldn’t be looking, but the city heat has me out on the streets, the dusty air pushed between buildings by gliding cars, windows open, soft music orchestrating their growling engines down the road, bumper to bumper, red lights sending messages to the twinkling skies, exhorting their ownership over the land. But every night, the globed roundness of your ass, the shadowed calves, the lights inviting, just before you get into bed, and here I am as lonely as the last cigarette, wondering how you sleep through the live wire of the city, how you avoid its call, when I’m lurking below.

How long can it last? Five minutes? Sometimes longer, a marathon, when you brush your hair, your chin crumpling, a Hollywood starlet when the callbacks dry up, but you’re forever timeless in my heart. A muscle I train just for you. Quieted by the whir of rubber on cement, by the curses of the homeless, the evacuation of the fire hydrant two blocks over. My anonymity bursting like a rotting pepper, my seeds hanging in rows like bats, waiting to erupt from this cave. Us, creatures of the night, and still, you hang like a painting in that window of yours, while I wait. The stop lights, the docent keeping us apart.