The City as a Collage
Lines for a self unfolding in concrete and glass
I am always a stranger in my own city. The skyline builds itself taller at dawn, shadows slipping upward like whispers from cracked sidewalks. I count the steps it takes to cross a street, divide the pavement by memory, and find my way to nowhere again.
The rain here is not like rain anywhere else. It is not wet; it is heavy, sharp, an arrangement of needles stitching patches of gray into a quilt that smothers the sun. I let it cover me, let it make me smaller until the world feels vast and accidental.
There are so many windows I cannot enter. Reflections press back like questions I don’t have time to answer. I wonder if the glass remembers every face that passes or if forgetting is the easier thing to do.
On the subway, I am everyone I see. The man holding a cello like a lifeboat, the woman chewing on her lipstick-stained thumb, the child who believes the fluorescent flicker is magic. We are all riding somewhere we cannot stay.
I think about the echo of my own footsteps, how the sound is swallowed by the city and turned into something unrecognizable. A hum, a drone, a silence pretending to be noise. When I walk home, I feel the buildings lean closer, as if they have questions only I can answer.
At night, I write my name in the condensation on my window and watch it fade. My breath becomes the city’s breath, fogging the boundaries between inside and out. I sleep, but the streets keep moving, keep spinning, keep forgetting where they began.
The city and I, we do not hold each other. We collide, we fold, we let the light bleed through. This is not belonging; this is something softer, stranger, an unspoken agreement to keep existing.
