THE EVOLVING CITY Carly Sachs   ROOF PERSPECTIVES 1. Around midnight, September 4, 2001 The sky around the Empire State Building is the color of blackboards clouded over, too much chalk. There are too many windows, too many peoples' lives to walk into. Counting the stars is simple math--- I get eight using two hands. I know the moon is out tonight, but I can't see beyond the brick fences. This is my yard, flat-stomached roof with tiny pockets of puddles, the hum of cooling systems and sirens. Ghosts of concrete sit in the shadows, ask me to rub their shoulders. One building over, a man is falling asleep with his television. 2. 4 am, September 13, 2001 The sky around the Empire State Building hangs damp like a towel draped over the shower rod, bathroom windows leaded with steam. The kind you can walk into like a silent movie. These days of the aftermath rise slowly, linger. Even the moon looks smokey. The buildings are not fences anymore. The sky is trying to clear, empty its pockets. The coming of dawn screams with sirens. Below on the streets rubies glisten in shadows. The weight of morning must be carried on our shoulders. Even if we wanted to, we cannot turn off the television. 3. 10:06 am, October 2, 2001 The sky around the Empire State Building is a thin blue gauze a woman wears over her shoulders and today the windows only shoot back my reflection into the cars parked on 12th. I try to do the math for a poem in my head. If I use the word moon in the second line, it will repeat in the sixth. The fences of the fourth line and while calculating, I check my pockets for change. I've grown accustomed to the sirens and the homeless, the way the shadows of strangers fan out, the way their shoulders fall into their bodies as if rehearsed for television. 4. 9:32 pm, October 11, 2001 The sky around the Empire State Building gathers clouds like spiderwebs, the night over- cast, waiting. You will not see them from my windows. We will not walk into the same buildings, do the math between weekends. You will slip away like the moon, stretching the days into fences. The walk home tonight, I put my hands in my pockets to keep from calling you. The sirens fold into notes for the couple kissing in the shadows The weight of my bag grows heavy on my shoulders like your absence, blue, flickering like television.   Carly Sachs teaches creative writing at George Washington University. Her first book of poems, the steam sequence, won the 2006 Washington Writers' Publishing House first book prize. With Reb Livingston, she curates Lolita and Gilda's Burlesque Poetry Hour at Bar Rouge. She is the editor of the why and later, an anthology of poems that women have written about rape and sexual assault, which is forthcoming from Deep Cleveland Press. Published in Volume 8, Number 4, Fall 2007.   Read more by this author: Carly Sachs: DC Places Issue