Wet Neon

I cross the street against the signal — the red says stop to no one in particular and I am no one in particular tonight. Sodium turns the rain the color of a bulb about to go, and the puddles hold a sign that reads backwards. Wet neon, you open-mouthed city — window after window lit for someone else's version of tonight. You put your brightest face on every corner and none of them turns when I walk by. You built ten thousand doors and locked them all from the inside. I pass the laundromat still spinning for no one — dryers tumbling sodium-white, a audience of warmth behind plate glass. Headlights drag my shadow forty feet then drop it. I step over myself. I keep walking. A taxi idles at the curb, its meter running for a fare already gone — the city's smallest abandoned conversation. Wet neon, you billboard-hearted city — every marquee spelling somebody else's name. You spill your light across the pavement and nothing sticks — the rain takes it all and carries it to the gutter where it looks exactly like a skyline on its back. I walked out because the walls leaned in. I walked out expecting what — a larger room? The avenue gave me room. It was the wrong room. Every streetlight is a bartender who won't look up. Wet neon — I see you, city. I see your face in the crosswalk puddle, upside down and still lit, still the light that lights nothing that needs