Fluorescent flickers illuminate the stained cement floors of the hallway. Your slippered feet music an uneven pad and scuff. This ***** city is home, whatever that means. This ***** city holds you like you're someone else's child. A burst of joy and music reaches for you through the window; someone bangs a door and you turn on the tap. As water sputters onto your toothbrush you catch a whiff of Dakota Jim's racist southern drawl, a puff of his ketamine breath.
You walk to the window, toothbrush dangling.
[Oh London, I know you love no one, but nights like this I feel your heartbeat in your embrace.]
History swells beneath your feet. Your eyes land on a seated figure, his grand headdress of feathers overpowering the tableau, his gaze calmer than the other mad happy swirls that make up the crowd. It makes you wonder what he sees. Probably nothing. You will learn that when he seems profound it is usually an accident. You are penned in by jagged skyline hieroglyphics. History swells. Your heavy hearted story is a speck consumed in all this history. All the history you were taught in school was death, you remember your mother bemoaning this war generals and battle dates history. You wonder at how much death this place has seen, how many lives the city has birthed and eaten, hungry mother staving off starvation.
We all write our stories on other people's bones. Of course the greatest cities would leave the greatest scars. And what did you come here looking for anyway?
[Hello Momento Mori city. I see you. I see your rooftops straining to **** stars. Do you mourn for your dead? Are they heavy in your belly? Are you going to eat me, too?]
But now, if you drag your little mind back from the immensities, everything around you is alive. Everyone is dancing, happy to be caught in her belly. Or her womb. Not one of you knows which, but there you are. In the courtyard, the small, steady figure of Freddie Stitz brings a lit cigarette to his lips and smiles up at you in the window.
Wipe that toothpaste off your face, you look ridiculous. Go back to bed.