I
Tonight the streetlights buzz like tired veins—
a dying swarm of sodium stars.
I walk their broken cadence
through canyons of concrete ribs
where storefronts unravel like wounds in cloth.
Somewhere a siren spirals out
losing altitude between towers
the color of unslept nights.
II
From the overpass I watch freight cars drag their iron hymns—
rust-throated, unrepentant—
across the spine of the republic.
Their wheels spit sparks that settle on snow
and melt it into small, black oceans.
Each boxcar carries an afterthought:
grain gone sour, machines with missing lungs,
a flock of paper flags that forgot what wind is.
III
The city’s clock has swallowed its own hands.
Time moves only sideways now,
like rats along the girders of the collapsed arena
where children once rehearsed applause.
In the husk of the cathedral
rain collects in the baptismal font—
a slick mirror reflecting nothing but the ceiling’s wound.
The bells are cracked,
yet every hour they still remember to bleed.
IV
I find you in the terminal,
a shadow bent over the last timetable.
Your eyes keep searching the departures
though all the destinations have been sewn shut.
We speak in the grammar of static:
half-words, vapor,
the low hum that lingers when a screen goes dark.
Outside, snow papers the entrances,
signing our names in white noise.
V
And yet—
A hush, thin as birdsong, threads the wreckage.
It gathers in gutters,
lifts the ashes from our coats,
shows the moon how to mend its own face.
Under that pale stitch of light
I feel the faint gallop of tomorrow—
fragile, feral, absurd—
rising somewhere beyond the busted horizon.
Like a flag we refuse to burn
it flutters, invisible,
insisting there is still a sky.
:: 04.25.2025 ::
E.P. Robles | Poetry 
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