What the City Tells Me

Tuesday is the sound of water

spraying at 6:45 in the morning.

I wake before my alarm,

before any warning.

The truck comes every week.

The hose hits the gutter.

Debris flows toward the drain.

A wet stripe marks the street.

I know what day it is

not from thinking,

not from the calendar I stopped checking,

but from this sound.

My body learned the rhythm

without me deciding.

The truck tells me what day it is

and I believe it.

By evening the stripe is dry.

No proof it was ever there.

Next Tuesday the truck returns.

I will wake again

to the same sound,

the same wet stripe,

the same proof that the city

remembers what day it is,

and I don't have to.