Can you spare a dime?

Sealing edges, the night’s bloom unfurls its dark petals, drawing seamless shadows around the city’s throat. The streetlights bleed a weak, jaundiced cognac against the asphalt, where discarded cigarettes burn themselves down to the filter like slow, smoldering regrets. A button downed world of tailored facades and starched collars begins to fray at the seams, and me standing with a bottle of regrets, shouting “Hallelujah!”

Come dawn, the sky splits like an overripe fig, spilling syrupy light onto the sidewalks. The pigeons rise—gray confetti tossed in the wake of last night’s wreckage. And still, the city hums its indifferent anthem beneath my feet, a subway hymn I’ve memorized in bruises and lost wages. Somewhere, the devil rings, awaiting loose change, and I am out of cigarettes but full of words.

Let them rise, then, this blasphemous psalm of mine—let them rise like steam from manhole covers, like hands from a grave, like a toast with cheap wine in a room that stinks of kerosene and forgiveness. Hearing a voice, “Hey mister, can you spare a dime?”