Fluorescent bruise on the ceiling, hum, hum

Receipt rain on the footpath, drum, drum

We don’t use names, only handles, only doors

Raise the fourth, cut the room, leave the hinge singing

I run my tongue along a crack in the light

Counting wrong on purpose so the floor feels right

Three three, then two two two

The crosswalk clicks like it knows what I’ll do

Your paper smells like wet sandstone air

You draw a stair, I climb it nowhere

No hymns, only alarms that forgot to stop

I say open, bite the O in half and drop

I don’t pray,

I calibrate the static in my teeth

I don’t stay,

I lean into the turn until it speaks

Raise the fourth, cut the room, leave the hinge singing

Bright knife, bright knife, hold, then thinning

If the door won’t answer, I’ll become the ringing

Raise the fourth, cut the room, keep the hinge singing

Tunnel reverb teaches my whisper to shout

Fast food clatter says in, and I choose out

Bridge ribs arch like a whale that forgot the sea

I tag each column, they forget me

Shoes slap puddles like bad applause

Sirens comb the air for reasonable cause

I rhyme the gutters with my under breath

Down tuned neon, quarter inch from death

I don’t pray,

I bargain with the meters in my bones

I won’t sway,

I keep the wrong count like a throne

Raise the fourth, cut the room, leave the hinge singing

Bright knife, bright knife, hold, then thinning

If the door won’t answer, I’ll become the ringing

Raise the fourth, cut the room, keep the hinge singing

Glass on stone, low cloud in the mouth

We stop, but the city moves south

Your finger writes melody on fogged museum skin

My skull rings once, the night rings in

I am the misprint that makes the line stay

I am the handle that hides the way

One, two, three, four

One, two, three, bar falls short

Not a crash, not a scream, just the city clearing its throat

I’m mid note, mid step, mid nothing, cut to mote

You’re half a street away with paper ghosts

I’m standing wrong while the quiet boasts

We rehearsed this ending without a script

All the way back when the first light tripped

Raise the fourth, air rips

Cut the, thin hiss

Hinge keeps, pulse, pulse

Singing

Time stretches thin, shows bone through skin

Pigeons walk like priests, the crowd leans in

I want to say okay, my mouth won’t lift

I offer you the rule like a final gift

Raise the fourth, cut the room, barely

Leave the hinge singing in the vacuum

If I stop, the city keeps running inside my chest

If I run, the city stands still, doing its best

What won’t resolve is the part I keep bringing,

The hinge falls sweet into ground, still singing

Raise the fourth

Cut the room

Hinge keeps singing

After we’re gone