Orangered and Out of Place

It’s been ninety days since they left it there,

a bright plastic tooth in the street’s gray glare.

The sun has bleached the neon to a sickly peach,

standing guard over what no one intends to reach.

The base has been chewed by a radial tire,

jagged and white where the plastic caught fire

in a scrape of bad luck on a Friday night.

Now it just sits in the fading porch light.

Everyone steers in a wide, practiced arc,

missing the pothole that hides in the dark.

I watch from the window and feel like the cone—

marking a disaster I’ve managed alone.