Short Confessor Poems

City Trees

They do not know I name them—
the trees blackened by exhaust,
asthmatic, stoic gods lining
pedestrian bridges that never forget.

Each leaf is a reluctant confessor.
Each trunk remembers
how I once pressed my palm and thought:
You too are surviving this.

I walk past ads that scream at no one.
Past lovers who will never call again.
Even the sky here has bills to pay.
But I stay, because someone has to remember
the dust collecting on invisible altars.