‘Mercury at Dusk’

Zayne DeVoe is a jack of all trades when it comes to creating, performing spoken word poetry at local venues and taking photos of downtown graffiti. He has been published in Florida Tech’s Kaleidoscope and University of Central Florida’s Cypress Dome. He is an avid yogi, public transport enjoyer, and chronic cheapskate.

Mercury at Dusk

Dusk settles without ceremony.
The street exhales—
shop lights warming the air
as daylight loosens its hold on the pavement.
She waits beneath a flickering sign,
her pulse falling into its rhythm,
her coat drawn tight against the cooling air.
The world passes—each grain of sand descending.
Down the lane, a little girl returns from school,
her bag striking softly at her side,
a ribbon bright as an unspent future
threaded through her hair.
She hums, rocking her head slightly,
small fingers fastened in her mother’s hand.
Behind a thin veil of cigarette smoke,
the woman’s gaze follows them.
For a moment, warmth gathers—
something nearly remembered.
She murmurs, almost in prayer:
“I hope she does not end up like me.”

The words fall quietly,
unclaimed by the passing street.
They move on.
The mother glances once—
a brief accounting of distance and resemblance.
Her grip tightens as smoke drifts between them.
“I hope she does not end up like her.”
No echo.
No correction.
The streetlight flickers,
polishing faces, then releasing them.
Each woman turns away,
carrying her own reflection—
unstable, bright, impossible to hold,
like mercury

Khedaren Perumal is a 22-year-old Mauritian poet, independent researcher, and mechatronics engineering student. His creative and academic work spans poetry, philosophy, sociology, political science, criminology, and mathematics. His poems have appeared in international literary journals, and his writing often explores memory, family, grief, labour, tenderness, and the quiet pressures that shape ordinary lives.