The Keys to the Jail

In the flattening California dusk, women gather under palms with their bags of bottles and cans. The grass is feathered with the trash of the day, paper napkins blowing across the legs of those who still drown on a patchwork of blankets. Shirtless in the phosphorescent gloom of streetlamps, they lie suspended. This is my one good life-watching the exchange of embraces, counting the faces assembled outside the ice-cream shop, sweet tinge of urine by the bridge above the tracks, broken bike lock of the gay couple's hands, desperate clapping of dark pigeons-who will take it from me?