5:30

5:30 a.m.

No one is here

Only me and my dad

In the truck

Ice like veins on the windshield

A frozen vignette in the morning

The houses lay dead beside the road 

Pity

This early nothing breathes

As we drive past

The building windows glare

Like camera flashes 

Tearless eyes in their wooden lids

Watching us pass

The mailboxes come quick

And leave faster

Maybe they only exist when the headlights

Find them

Maybe we are passing through a never ending 

onion of layers of dark

Filled with listless houses and strange mailboxes

Wordless in the 5:30 dim

The yellow line we climb is the only

Color at 5:30

The two of them seem out of place

On the asphalt

Two can be lonely at 5:30

But all in the dark seem too tired to feel

The truck hacks and coughs beneath 

The cruel pedal 

A meatless mule it becomes in the morning cold

And the world passes in a forgetful smudge

And the driveways grab at our tires

And the mailboxes barely skim my passenger door

Frighteningly close

And the world disappears again in the rearview window

And we pass

The only light in this sleeping world