I bake in the one week of cool hard summer that
July brings this year, enough warmth on the street
to make me not care about the nats touching my face
as I smoke and look up;
the building is asleep as it should be
and I’m careful not dream in the black to long
looking at my old home.

I turn back down the road and turn from 5 to 30
as a man approaches me with a different accent,
to mine, and since the night is nearly
complete, I feel easy
and give him a light.

I see him again as I walk home
as he speaks to a stranger near my uncles block,
and takes his phone.