AS THE WIRLD SPINS The cigarette burns like a small clock between my fingers, counting seconds the city forgets. It’s late enough that the world pretends it’s asleep, but I hear it spin anyway a low hum under skin and pavement. Dogs bark in their dreams or at ghosts, chains clink like nervous thoughts. Somewhere a car slides past, tires whispering secrets to the road, headlights cutting the dark into honest pieces. Streetlights lie the way all lights do steady, yellow, promising safety while showing just enough to keep you awake. Smoke lifts and disappears, like it never meant anything, like it didn’t just sit with me through another minute of being the only one who noticed the night breathing. The cigarette shortens. The world keeps turning. I stay still long enough to feel it happen. I whisper GOODNIGHT to earth as it turns, this cigarette burns so I let it yurn for another hit, I tell myself don’t quit. Goodnight earth I whisper again. #My city #EarthSystems