Filling the front window of the small house: a lit-up, sumptuous dollhouse.
The saucer magnolia’s blooms break open early. They are already browned.

It is February. In the grocery, a child screams three aisles over for what it can’t have.
The automated lotto machine does not give change. It says so after you’ve fed it a $5 bill.

The silver maples on our street list: crooked, waterlogged, and dead. Only my landlord
springs to have ours hacked down so some stray storm won’t plunge it through the roof.

A fat robin hops onto the stump as I pull in from work, in fruitless pursuit of a worm.