Four

Pacing lines and yellow patterns across the sale as merchants close shop, watching the moles on her back, brown pigment against porcelain skin, knuckle to palm, twisting feet in a waltz down sidewalks, entwined fingers brushing thigh and hip. The light started at market, brown coffee sunrise; then like squatting bishops, square and low, the white canvas of pole tents opposed the sun belt of noon - the ochre core burning down over the broad rims of building tops, what few embers left for stars or dawn. Tents are folded as eastward clouds begin a slow coil upward to a boil - pressure builds, contracting heavy laid nimbostratus to rain, hard and brittle against the shop awnings, slurred orange light to blue-gray, to darkness; sudden, furious, then coiling flu and static flange, pouring streetside to storm drains in asphalt watersheds. At a shop front we fit into the shallow indent, storm pressing us against the concrete, gale backwashing to vortices; turns the emptied streets to wind funnels, spinning leaves, bags, papers; poems on their axes. And above - follow building lines and prang to sky; is utter, banal, flat, and lightless.