City

We are hoping to set up a regular posting schedule soon. Until then, we will be posting whenever Fiona has something worth posting. This post is a little piece that she showed me a few weeks ago, and just found again.

You can feel the heartbeat of the city through the soles of your shoes, if you’re patient. The subway running her lifeblood through the skin of stone. The streets are the tear tracks and bloody scratches from her fight to stay alive in a war society has waged inside her. The statues, standing proud and crooked, are the hairs standing up on the back of her neck as the train runs a chill down her spine.

Bridges are the jewelry on her hands and around her neck. They are as much a chain as an adornment. The scabbed spots of green found in a passing car and the hidden parks are a reminder of what she was built from, and was destroyed to give her life.

She is always moving, growing, changing. Seeking fame and terrified of what she may be famous for. Her words are found in the graffiti. There, and in the crumpled literary disasters of a writer. In the sighs of her people too. She is young in the fresh sidewalks, but so tired in the boarded windows and crumbling buildings.

A city is cold, made of bricks and concrete and smoke so thick you can see it in the streetlights. But as living and breathing as the people who keep her alive.