Crowded & Empty

There is chatter spilling
from overcrowded coffee shops
with outdoor seating

it spills across
brown curbed spaces
filling the quiet gaps
between passing patrons

their voices are disappearing too
giving in to the silence
of an empty landscape

their numbers
are fixed in the universe

but we carry
the light
in fleeting ways

in our unfinished stories
and vanishing footprints

we are both brimming
and dying
both alive
and fading fast