The sky is the color of a wet sidewalk

The sky is the color of a wet sidewalk

and the air smells like a match just struck.

Up there, the grommets are doing the talk,

banging the hollow steel with a violent luck.

It’s a rhythmic whip-crack, a heavy snap

that sounds like a wet towel hitting a wall.

There is no grace in the way it’s caught in the trap

of a wind that doesn't want to be here at all.

I watch the white threads fraying at the hem,

a slow unmaking of a heavy, stitched square.

It’s being beaten by the very thing it’s meant to stem,

losing its shape to the weight of the air.