But the daydream collapses and time returns us
to corners where hustling boys expire
like comets at the suburbs of your thalamus.
Gunshots weaken the houses; hope vanishes
like old cellphones. Blood darkens a stoop;
the mouth is disagreeable. But then, one late morning,
a sunshower baptizes shadows on a street. The steaming
scent of a wet sidewalk ordains your stylus,
and in a lot not far from here a girl in braids grabs
the wrist of a boy, running through a cloud of rubble.