The Fill

The trucks arrived at seven

to pour the boiling black heart of the road.

The smell is a chemical weight,

crawling through the gaps in the baseboards

until the kitchen tastes like a refinery.

I stepped off the curb to get the mail.

The asphalt looked solid, a fresh scab,

but the heat reached through my soles

and pulled the glue from my cheap shoes.

I left a piece of myself in the grit.

A bubble of pitch rose up,

glistening like a crow’s eye.

It popped with a soft, oily hiss,

releasing a ghost of steam

that smelled of everything we try to bury.