The pothole is dark and deep

The pothole is dark and deep,

a hole I've walked past for three weeks.

There's a rusted beer cap at the center,

a message that nobody seeks.

This morning a woman's heel caught it.

She didn't fall but she swore,

the crack in her voice like she'd been

waiting for danger to find her door.

The asphalt around it is crumbling,

edges worn away by time,

by feet and weather and the city's

small neglect, its small crime.

I think about what's underneath,

about all the broken things

that stay broken because nobody

bothers to give them wings.

The rusted cap, the crack in her voice,

the way the asphalt is giving way—

I can't stop thinking about it,

about the dangers we refuse to say.

There's something in a pothole

that means something else,

something about small broken things

that we learn to live with ourselves.