Empty Streets | Poetry

The empty streets were patient that night.

The hurried feet of day had disappeared,

and the old bends of the road seemed to wait—

as if they knew

someone like me would eventually return.

April had been cruel again.

The thunderstorms came and went,

yet even they failed to disturb

the stubborn calm

of those silent streets.

Rain tapped quietly on the pavement.

The night listened.

Salt from my eyes

sank into the tired heart

of those empty streets,

and I tried not to hurt them

with the heaviness of my steps,

with the dull weight I carried

without quite knowing why.

They had seen it all before.

Laughing youngsters

who believed the city at night

existed only for music and bright lights.

Secret lovers

turning every corner into a promise.

Victors shouting too loudly,

politicians speaking too carefully,

citizens dragging their anger behind them.

All of them had passed through once,

leaving behind nothing more

than faint, echoing footsteps.

But year after year

those deserted streets still waited.

They waited for people like me—

the restless ones

walking alone at night,

trying to catch up with lost yesterdays,

trying to understand

their uncertain tomorrows,

trying, somehow,

to hold on to the slippery moment called today.

They waited through scorching summers,

through monsoons that soaked the world,

through winters cold enough

to quiet every sound.

They waited for people like me

to walk across their silent chest

searching for impossible things—

mermen in mirages,

poetry in garbage bins,

a rainbow trapped

inside wicked traffic lights.

And sometimes, beneath starshine,

during a slow late-night walk,

the empty city nights would loosen

something tight inside my thoughts.

That is when it happened.

My midnight thoughts would spill out,

reckless and unguarded,

thrown into the waiting dark.

And under the patient moon,

while the city pretended to sleep,

I would stand there a little longer,

still searching for meaning

in forgotten corners,

still listening

to the quiet confessions

of those faithful silent streets—

streets that had watched

countless wanderers before me,

and would quietly watch

countless more.