City of Borrowed Night

City of Borrowed Night

Once the courthouse windows burned like stars,

and the bells spoke clean as morning water.

Justice walked the avenues in plain shoes,

nodding to every open door.

Maps meant something then.

Promises had weight.

A child could point to the skyline

and trust what it stood for.

But the change arrived without sirens

a soft stain at the edge of the calendar.

The light thinned first at the corners,

as if embarrassed of its own glow.

From the sewers and stairwells it gathered,

a patient, hungering dusk.

It slid its fingers into the system,

learned the language of signatures and seals.

The people called it temporary.

They called it necessary.

They called it anything but what it was

as it climbed the ribs of the buildings.

Now the streets wake already tired.

Neon pretends to be sunlight.

The courts echo like empty bowls,

and truth keeps a nervous address.

The shadow grows clever with power,

wears robes, wears badges, wears smiles.

It feeds in quiet offices

on the bright veins of the innocent.

Every broken life becomes its supper.

Every unheard plea, a banquet.

It fattens on forgotten names

and the silence of good intentions.

Still, somewhere beneath the grime

a stubborn glimmer refuses to die.

In a teacher’s chalk, a neighbor’s voice,

in the small defiance of caring.

The city has not entirely forgotten

what it means to stand in the sun.

And shadows, no matter how greedy,