Concrete Ceiling

I took the long way home to miss the talk

of neighbors leaning on their chain-link gates.

I stopped where the shadow kills the chalk

and the heavy, gray ceiling just waits.

My laces were loose so I knelt in the grit

where the city hides what it doesn't want back.

An old mattress lay there, split down the middle,

with mud in every crease and crack.

The springs poked out like rusted, broken ribs

from a chest that finally stopped trying to rise.

I felt the weight of the cars passing overhead,

a thousand invisible, rolling eyes.

Nobody looks down when they're making time,

and nobody sees the man near the drain.

We’re just the stuff that the pavement forgets

whenever it starts to rain.