Street exhalation

Red hand up, waiting for traffic to stop.

Then it starts, a low, steady plume

from the rusted manhole cover

by the curb. Industrial, damp,

carrying a ghost of oil and earth.

It pulses, like something breathing

under the street, slow and deep.

Patterned iron, slick with wet, old cold.

Everything else moves, but this just sighs,

releases a bit of the city's dark, wet gut.

And then the light changed.