a scuffed leather jacket
carefully folded
laying next to a coffee cup
on the exit ramp
from 35 to hi line road
there is a story there
a life once lived
but i’ll be damned
if i can make heads or tails
out of the offering
as sunlight glints off of
the metal studs
sending slivers of gold
into hazel incongruence

traffic is backed up
for miles down the scar
cutting past
the silhouetted skyline
thick clouds of diesel hang
obscuring the tallest floors
bumper to bumper
dissatisfaction on a friday
morning of frozen catastrophe

a scuffed leather jacket
that has seen its fair share
of hard times
folded neatly next to
an old black coffee cup
on the reflective lumps
separating the lanes
an indecipherable effigy
just outside reunion tower
largely ignored by the
angry motorists sitting
perfectly still over
combustion engines of
distressed immobility
a disco ball of reflections
from jutting metal studs
screaming a story lost
in the clouds of fumes
suffocating the city around me