Third Floor, East Facade

I've walked this block since March.

This morning there was a tree

coming out of the building—

third floor, east wall,

three feet of thin trunk

wedged in the crack

where the courses split.

The roots have spread into the mortar

the way fingers spread into something soft—

pale at the tips, dry,

like they ran out of easy ground

and kept going anyway.

The leaves are already rusting.

It's barely October.

I stood there long enough

that the man coming out of the bodega next door

stopped and looked up with me.

Been there all summer, he said.

I wanted to ask him

what he thought it was doing.

I didn't.

I just looked at it another minute—

the way the trunk had split the brick

just enough, the way the roots

had made the mortar give,

all summer, without anyone

deciding anything.