Under the Late Streetlights

Under the Late Streetlights

1I. Outside
At nine, the city puts on its metal face.
Shutters click down like mouths refusing questions.
Beside Aunt Suri, I hurry past the locked doors,
sure the whole street wants us gone.
My class folder knocks against my knee;
even that small sound seems louder than it should.

2A bus leans sighing toward the curb.
Its driver taps the wheel, and I decide
she must be angry at the late hour.
I cannot hear her through the folded doors.
Her fingers keep their little rhythm
while a paper cup trembles in its holder beneath the dashboard light.

3II. Beside the Curb
Then she lowers the bus toward the pavement
and waits while a passenger steadies a cane.
The driver leaves her seat to move a bag
that blocks the aisle beside the door.
I loosen my grip on my folder.
The tapping could have been a song.

4Farther on, a cleaner guides a wide broom
around a glove dropped beside a bench.
He sets the glove where someone might return.
Aunt Suri lifts one hand in greeting.
I had counted locked doors, not the people
keeping paths open underneath their quiet rows of lamps.

5III. Toward Home
At the crossing, our shoes join other shoes:
a cook's dark clogs, a messenger's worn sneakers.
I do not know what waits at their homes.
But all of us watch the same small signal,
and when it changes, we step forward
as if the street has taken one long breath.

6The shutters have not risen when we leave.
The bus still sighs behind us at the curb.
Yet now its lights seem stitches, not sharp pins,
holding separate corners of the dark together.
I slow enough to match my aunt's footsteps
and make room for another pair beside us.