The Truck at 4:15

From midnight I'd been running a loop—

2009, a thing I said at a party,

not a crime, just the kind of dumb

the mind finds worthy

of full rehearsal at 2 a.m., and 3,

and past 3:30 when the room

had that particular dark—not just dark,

a dark with texture, a gloom

you could almost press your thumb into.

Then the truck. Headlights first,

a bar of yellow moving slow

across the ceiling, then dispersed,

then the hydraulic sound below,

that compression, mechanical, banal,

and I was asleep before it reached

the corner. I don't know. The haul

of a garbage truck. I've been looking

for the reason since I woke.

The loop just stopped. The light crossed over.

Whatever I'd been doing to myself—it broke

by about a truck's worth.

That was enough.