Off the main city street, filled to the brim with neon light, effervescing with jubilation, and smelling of human excesses, down a quiet, dark side street that veers to the right, a single solitary street lamp’s sphere of harsh white light drags the neglected rear of a building out of the anonymity of night. Wishing to envelop everything within its iron-tight embrace, the light reveals aged gray bricks stained orange and brown surrounding glass-covered suggestions of peoples’ lives; but its influence, ultimately, is limited, and it reaches out in vain as the rusted fire escape, aloof and disinterested, climbs back into its preferred darkness, its sharp black shadows thrown forcefully across all. In the morning, the only meager hint of the intensity of this battle of wills is the shapes of these shadows etched in brick and glass.