Past the Date

It has been dark for two hours and nobody told the air. Eleven degrees, no wind, the sky scraped clean down to the stars the city lets through: three.

Across the yard a man in a T-shirt is smoking the way you do in August, elbows on the rail, looking at nothing in particular.

This morning it was gloves. Tonight I'm out in a shirt, the winter coat on its hook by the door, patient as a dog that knows the word.

He stubs it out and goes in. I stay a minute longer on credit, the way you keep a library book past the date, knowing the fine is coming and still small.