beneath veneers and gallows' grins 

rests 

An underworld of chiding hymns 

breaths 

taken jagged between razor hail

depths 

of pulses oscillating there.

 

an ocean of parapets

surging to a wave so big

you could live a lifetime before it breaks 

 

these cherished, rooftop conversations 

champions of these ides of summer 

buried in that 3am sincerity 

found so sparsely in the living

 

we, like glass, exist to be seen through