Public Domain

The bathrobe has a hole in the left pocket

where my fingers poke through like pale roots.

I’m dragging the bin to the curb at midnight,

my heels clicking against the cold cement.

A neighbor’s porch light clicks into life,

a sudden, robotic beam that finds me out.

I look toward the hedge and see the dot—

the red, blinking eye of a doorbell camera.

I am being filed away in a cloud somewhere,

a grainy figure in moth-eaten fleece.

The street is a gallery of silent witnesses

recording the exact moment I gave up for the day.