the seam of your undershirt,
stretched straight across the valley’s crest
of your back, creasing through
the fabric of your shabby purple
sweater, highlighted by shadows cast
upon your form by the languid yellow
of the streetlights lining the street at
six in the evening, when everything
is blue & black, & dumb gray
is the atmosphere, ringing with the
revving of the cars passing us by
in streaks of red & blindness,
blurring past us, to the rhythm of
the rise & fall of your shoulders &
the sway of your hips, perfectly in
view as you walk ahead, unaware
of my stare, boring deep into the
dip of your spine’s abyss, thinly sheathed
by the taut stretch of your undershirt
draped over by your flimsy sweater,
mauve in the dim light, & through the haze
of gray escaping my lips, forming a wall
gossamer-thin before my face, streaming
in between my vision & your form, your
image of purple, mauve, silent, in the
blue & yellow, of black-brown bob hair
glinting in the sharp pierce of the dull
fireflies overhead, dead, undancing,
fixed atop their posts as beacons,
but jaded, faded, & damp,
like the purple of your sweater.