I.
It's a cold morning and the flowers
Are frosted with white powdered-sugar icing and
Wave quite merrily from their windowsill prisons,
Sprinkling violet petals onto the wet cement.
They dance to the constant music of taxi horns and sirens,
The city breathes as one.

II.
High school girls perch on the fire escape,
Reading Plath with a pen and notebook,
Years from now those pieces of script
Will be nothing but a dusty memory, mothball scented,
To pull from a box and show to the children like an old lover's rose, but for now
The ink letters fall like rain onto the sidewalk.

III.
The smoke smell of chestnut coffee wafts out of the shop door,
Chocolate truffles wave their pink-paper tutus
One man buys a marzipan rose for his wife, the girl behind the counter twists it up with a shiny ribbon, a quarter extra.
Outside, a haggard man with a scraggly beard holds up a homemade sign.
The coffee girl leans her head out the door and tosses him the coin.
It shines, a city shooting star, and burns out on the gutter.