These days,
evenings get darker, sooner.
If there were leaves where I lived,
they might fall now.
In Times Square tonight,
I saw a young girl in a deli,
maybe nineteen, maybe not.
She wore a pair of sweatpants
with something silkscreened cheaply
across the ass, was holding her high-heels
instead of wearing them,
and had a huge zit on the side of her face.
She stood ahead of me in line,
her feet getting filthier, and kept asking the clerk
something in Spanish.
No, the clerk said, three times, but she kept asking.
No, he finally said, We have no band-aids.