Terry Spohn

Light puddled on leaves, late September, the little girls' dresses too short and no one's cold yet at night: you wait before sunset for someone who never shows up. Just when you do you pack it in? Every day you stand out there next to the sidewalk where the shortcuts are worn flat and the traffic is loud and dangerous. Sunset comes on earlier. In the kitchens along Prospect Street the lights are going on, water is running. Soon the smells. What is it, you wonder, that smell? What are these people eating? They are your neighbors. When you sleep they sleep next to you, just a wall away. The long shadows come down toward you. No one arrives. Neighbors are sitting down together, pushing their black hair away from their faces, speaking their languages, their secrets like the spokes of a wheel spinning around you.