Tonight we'll spill our secrets, but only when
every soul in this city has gone to sleep,
when the artists painting from the rooftops,
and the young, long-legged girls on their fire escapes,
and the insomniac writers in their coffee shops
with pens and napkins and muffin crumbs
(or at their desks in their crummy apartment buildings
where they can hear the sounds of lovemaking from the floor above)
have retreated to their beds,
when the socialites in their slinky black dresses,
and the taxi drivers who are done with the scum they serve,
and the homeless men in the pews of churches
have gone to sleep at last.

Tonight I shall make you fall in love with me, but
only when it's so quiet we can hear the muted
fluttering of a moth's wings in the darkness,
the soft thudding as it flaps against the sleeve of my jacket;
and when you hold my hand it will be like
the heartbeat of a bird in the summer heat,
and I will show you, over late-night cigarettes, that
even in a city that never sleeps, we can find peace.