I keep finding myself wandering through
these old St. Pete apartment sprawls.
Everything is parched, quiet. No paper boy,
no kids. No hippies underneath their cars.
From the back, the rooms look uninhabited.
Like drained aquariums. I keep thinking:
I can't stop looking at their lives.
Somebody's up: that elderly couple
over there, flickering off and on
Their faces are so expressionless
they could be talking about anything:
that yellow bowl upon the shelf, a noisy dog,
their minds are fixed on something else,
something in the light outside
seeping through the sand-cracked walls,
bleeding through the half-closed blinds
like a dark, unshareable secret.