He stands at the crosswalk
Impatience leaking from his nail beds
As his adjacent light glows a harsh crimson
And the world takes an inconvenient forty five seconds to pause.

He takes his iPhone from his jacket pockets
Equipped with their own fireplace
And begins his minute of promiscuity
With perverse and pretentious products,
Stealing his stare from empty space
Outside his feet.

The woman picking through garbage
Is a sad museum exhibition on the Holocaust
Presented to an audience who quote the definition of “genocide”
From the monotone letters
In their tenth grade history books.

Charity echoes like the buzz of mosquitos laying eggs in his ears,
His eyes squint as he winces from October cold.
Rustling clangs behind him and he pointedly looks away, turning his collar up
Seemingly to the wind.

He ignores ***** open palms,
His superpowers seeing through skin
To poppy filled veins
Belonging to a weaponized mind,
But little does he know
They’ve turned his silence into a bomb
And broke his fingers to submission to
Keystrokes and card swipes.

The woman claims her treasure,
Wipes the grime off the rim of the used paper cup.
He puts his headphones in his ears and
Loosens the screws in his face,
Letting his mouth fall slack and void.
The light turns green.