monday morning

Chicago skyline wrapped in fog

an image faint in the distance

as the sun, red, beats through the clouds.

Before me, the working class awakens,

trudges to an ordinary Monday,

unaffected by the mystery to the horizon.

Standing tall and silent,

under a grey cloudy,

as beacons of prosperity,

of all the great things money can buy.

But the sun outshines it all

in the red bloody beating,

parting the grey with entitlement.

Nobody lives downtown. I used to look forward to the nights my mom stayed at work until midnight and my dad and I would go pick her up. Cool summer night breeze would brush my skin through the car window. And everything was so quiet. I could almost feel the faint buzz of neon signs. All of downtown was mine and mine alone to take in and witness.

Forgetting

There was a little girl who was strong, smart and independent, who would sleep to moonshine lullabies, feel the day as if it spoke to her (just her) and smiled at the world from a distance. She revelled in the secrets whispered by the wind. She smiled knowingly, too knowingly, and kept to herself.

How can I be that girl again?

Forget your midnight mid-dream breathing, your summer smile, so refreshing. Forget the rhythm that we walked and the language no one else would get.

How can I learn to walk again, see again, be again?

Kill the me I was for you and start again.

like, whatever.

I feel glances and stares like jabs or caresses. Sometimes intrusive, but sometimes gentle and reassuring. Travelling through a dense sea of eyes, moving to the beat of schedules and appointments, I am surrounded and vulnerable. I am suddenly aware of my flesh. I am an animal. I'm not my books, talents or ideas. I am my flesh, my baby face, my doubts. I am not strong enough. I will be devoured. So I run; pushing my essence to the top of a nearby building. I am floating above everything. I turn up the music, and let my essence move to it, get lost in it, become it. Because my essence can be anything. It molds to the elegant edges of skyscrapers, sinks into the tiny alleys. It is empowered by the human potential, the attention to detail, the creation of systems. It grows and grows until all of Chicago is under its fingertips. Its fingers glide over the skyline in admiration and love.

I'm sitting on the Orange Line train. Doors closing. I catch my reflection on the window pane and remember who I am.