after the streetlights stopped grieving

that one winter the street lights bled what glow they had left into our hands instead of the night sky and we’d feel the regret it held and the relief in dying or succumbing to the inevitable and sometimes we’d cry because it made us warm for the first time in years and because there weren’t many stars anymore and the moon seemed in disrepair too and in time we couldn’t see each others faces anymore even though we hadn’t in years anyway

though we felt the crevices that grew like tree roots and thought about how we couldn’t remember that story dad used to tell and wondered if it was buried somewhere in one of the sagging fault lines or the pool of flies whose wings sometimes made it hard to see but didn’t ever reach to find out

because all we could think about was that street light and the resentment it held or if it held anything at all