Our City
Trees stood up like horse-hair bristles on the spine of a hill, the ridge raised hackles as though someone walked over the grave of the earth and it shivered we came out in rain rain hung about the necks of the peaks, the summits dissolved into wet kisses holding the sky down, smothered lost outings came back like pale little ghosts only half there, confused; and we filled in the gaps with talk of other times all disremembered the same but different leaching into each other like the unset colours smudged in the rain like us, the same people but changed, so changed The sun came out in time to set the world was fired in blues and reds, we left it all behind and sped into the waiting night, where the city wore smoke and coloured lights and ‘how strange we don’t live here anymore’ these streets we hardly recognise still know us, still echo the pitch of our footfalls but are changing fast, and soon will forget us, we struggle to keep up winding our lives tight like clockwork soldiers, we let them all go at once no we don’t know these people, anymore, we no longer know these places. Everything is nothing but strangers’ faces rising in a swelling crowd; the map of our memories is no longer accurate, the way home has grown obscure. This used to be our city. How strange we don’t live here anymore.