overheard, at a Pittsburgh bus stop

   her voice has the lisp of the tooth-poor or toothless and the soft silver edge of exhaustion, he goin under that bridge there to score with that trick, Rebecca, with the red hair, she’s a trick, she doesn’t clean her pussy, none of’m do, they all smell like their pussies

   and polo-shirted old men walk by unmoved and totemic, and listen, I was clean, I was clean, and I was taking care of the home for him, and with him, and I was makin’ him dinner every night arahn 10:30, and I was a housewife, and that’s all I ever wanted to be

   and the air grows cold and heavy and quieter now, all copper-sadness all mouthfuls of blood and sawdust, but he don’t know how to love like that an’ so we couldn’t live like that, and the pigeons sqwirrup and the buses creak and everything is lost and loss and smog and sweat and missives scrawled limbless, with sticks, in the dirt.

Patrick Thomson is a writer living in Queens, NY