Under the Overpass

The avenue goes under the highway. The pillars are wound in passionflower, picked bare as high as an arm reaches. The old lanes overhead are planted in squash that has run over the edge. Under the vines the market is closing.

A man rolls up a tarp of unsold peppers. Two men argue about the price of eggs, and neither is selling any. A boy on a crate tapes a drip line where someone has cut it, cleanly. In the expansion joints above them the bats are not out yet.

At the last table a card says FOUND UNDER THE ROAD. On a cloth, in rows, lie the finds, each with a tag tied to it. Bottle caps. A child's shoe. A ring of keys, and on the tag, no door. A bus pass from 2019, laminated, its photograph gone to a gray square.

Take what you can name the use of, says a woman minding the table.

You can name the use of a bus pass. You take it. Past the last table, at the curb, a bus stands with its lights on and its doors shut.