I was born in a city where the air suffocates
The building groans, its bones cracking under the burned of a thousand years of unspoken regret
This city smells like something poisoned,
petrol and sweat soaked into the earth,
the ghost of rain that never touches the ground.
It seeps into my skin,
As an alarm,
I never wanted to belong here.
The city speaks to me in a dialect of dust and noise
I speak its language too
but my words feel like a borrowed coat,
ill-fitting, awkward on my shoulders.
Even when I strive to make them mine,
they slip away,
elusive and alien.
The chai here burns my tongue,
sharp like an old wound that never healed
and I swallow it down,
Even as I smoke, the air smells of snow and distant mountains
I have never gazed upon