No Shadows

Empty summer like a post card
with no picture,
or a hotel room whose windows
are coated in concrete.
I search everything
for a crystalline example
of a bad idea but I can’t find it here.
The mirrors have hand prints
from decades ago that fade
almost as slowly as my memory
in everybody’s minds.
We work at night these days
scraping your gum off of the underside
of tables, benches, and trash can rims,
in the hours when the streetlights dim,
and everything is easier to lie about.
The rafters rust like eye crust
and it flakes off falling over all the tile,
and while we sweep it off the face of it
commercials play for hours on the radio.
They say the building is a shoebox
full of ghosts because the concentration
of them all keeps things quite crowded here.
We’re well beyond the point of fear
and just stand with them in the elevator
while they float there with no shadows
and sometimes argue about
what was more worth dying for.