Downstream

The sky finally quit its gray, heavy sobbing

leaving the curb to handle the leftovers.

I stood by the iron grate, my head throbbing,

watching the runoff race through the clovers.

A lottery ticket, pink and completely soaked,

spun in a circle before it got sucked in.

It looked like a tongue, or a secret once joked,

now just a pulp that the world had tucked in.

There was an oily rainbow slick on the top

swirling around a crushed cigarette butt.

I couldn't move. I couldn't make it stop,

the way everything ends up in the same rut.

It’s honest, I think, the way the street cleans

itself of the things we drop when we’re hurried.

Beneath the metal, nobody knows what it means

to be something that’s drowned and then buried.