I exist this moment upon unforgiving sidewalks neatly stepping along rolled out concrete ribbons, my feelings confined by bounding brick limestone apartments soaring high in the blue sky. My eyes focus straight ahead desperately reigning in a wandering imagination before traveling down naked alleys, proposing marriage to empty gutters, asking to not be swallowed. Lost in a city far from anything I know, sidewalk’s rising up, slapping me with concrete loneliness sucking life from me with radiating hot damp heavy air. Motherless children gathered on stoops spit as I pass yelling edgy breast puffing obscenities, pitiful birch pretending to mellow agitated passengers crawling from underground, crowds encased in transparent shells held together with yellowing anxiety, blocks of cavern facades shrink self esteem exposing open sores, red canopies shade peers who remark to themselves over gin, how foreign I look. I walk pissing tears conjugating bits of memory pressing toward something I don’t know, sidewalk walking with nothing to do. Haunting beautiful girls and boys turn away too busy building neurotic walls, vendors close doors pretending to nap. There are no white clapboards with green shutters pointing the way home, no hula hoops nor backyard picnics inviting me to leave my troubles in the wind. I’m walking hands folded praying dark joins cool night air letting me sleep to dream of lost touches and gentle kisses, of red noses that made me smile so long ago.
