Freed into autumn with empty pockets and toenails like glittering unwrapped lollipops, we perfect the only arts we've spent the summer creating: dreaming, biting nails, beating cake batter til the bubbles dissolve into a creamy black oasis, without traces of flour or egg shells or hastiness, and Lord for this tastiness we praise thee. And for the 5-minute summer full of self-doubt and amazing purple flowers that still won't die, and women bouncing with juices wrapped in tight tops, in sweat; Lord for this and for babies on the subway, babies on the street, the only sweet shrewd creatures who are not ashamed to stare strangers down and even smile, we thank thee. For found friends who become lost again, for all of them, and for those of us leftover in solitude and dirty t-shirts; for clothing and for cheap boxed pasta and a working roof and an occasionally working toilet and the will to write, we thank thee with the sincerity of solitary travelers stuck in the same city, swimming through the same stale air and under whose sky we sing in separate showers requiems of an era too fetal to name.