Dissolving Streetlight

That morning fog thickened like wet wool

until the streetlamp across the alley

blinked out, swallowed whole

by gray breath.

I stood freezing, cigarette burning slow,

numb fingers fumbling the match, the flame

flickered and bent, a lost signal

in the cold blur.

The city’s edges fell soft, ragged,

lost beneath the hush of mist

that folded the world into itself

and left me standing still.