Night Shades

Under a smother of dark clouds a city skyline sinks, there will be no starshine the lights of a million windows must drain and replace another blanked out evening. The eyes of stray cats fire up, it is time now for noise to hunt silence down, for the garish to consume the subdued. Shoes, new and old, scuff grime into renovated store fronts, where shadows cling to the detached hissing of neon signs. It will be dawn when the shoes bleed, when the stars return to briefly gutter. There are rodent tracks that arrow between gray blocks of masonry where nocturnal crimes crumble into obscurity. The metro subway is empty yet full of ghosts, but just for a moment, only a moment.