#d - Hello Poetry

I. A City of Forgotten History You do not shine, you remember. Your bricks still hum beneath the paint, their red worn thin as a monk’s sleeve. The cranes claw upward, tired of grief, but the dust keeps falling like unfinished snow. They call you ruin, but they lie. You are memory refusing renovation— a sentence the architects cannot rewrite, a mouth still tasting ash from a century’s fire. Every wall a lung, each breath another ghost sighing through cracked enamel windows. I walk your corridors of soot and grammar, reading what’s left between translations. Here the new men come with their blueprints, their sterilized optimism, their disinfectant dreams. They think forgetting is progress, that silence can be paved. But the cobblestones speak when it rains; the gutters remember what ran red. And still you rise, not proud, not pleading— only persistent, the way rust endures where polish fails. II. The Honest Lover You never made promises, only coffee gone cold. The morning after is your truest hour— no curtains drawn, no careful apologies, just daylight pressing its thumbprint on the dust. We share the quiet of survivors, two clocks still ticking out of habit. Your streets smell of metal and rain, mine of memory and mistake, and somewhere between them — love, if love can live without adornment. You do not ask to be adored. You stand there, hair uncombed, eyes the color of industry and fatigue, and I believe you. Belief is rarer than beauty now. There is mercy in the ordinary, in the dishes unwashed, the walls unpainted. I can trust what does not pretend. Your pulse against my palm, the city breathing slow beneath its scars— that is enough. III. The Graves Speak Across the street the earth is crowded. Names erode like salt on skin, dates reduced to breath and lichen. Some stones still speak in Hebrew, some in silence. Others were never marked at all. No one comes for spectacle. There are no tickets, no plaques, only grass, and the patience of the dead. I walk between them quietly, uninvited but not unwelcome, their absence louder than my shoes. The wind rearranges petals, small offerings to impossible memory. Each grave a door that never shut, each unmarked mound a warning. They lie beneath the modern noise— the tram, the radio, the soft denial of a city learning to forget politely. But still, the ground remembers. When it rains, the water carries whispers, and I swear I hear them say: We are the sentence you still live inside. IV. The Child of Conflict I was born from the noise after bombs. My blood keeps two alphabets, two silences. One learned to pray while the other knelt in smoke; both survived by accident and argument. I am the beast that carries its own making, a cart of bones pulled by history’s hand. Violence wrote my lineage in ink that stains— love was the footnote, peace the errata. From Russia’s frost, from islands of ash, from a continent that measured mercy in ruins, I arrived American — the empire’s afterthought, a passport printed in amnesia. Yet I walk with their breath in mine. The persecuted taught me patience, the victors taught me how to forget. I have inherited both lessons and spend my life unlearning each. Call me contradiction: a wound that tends its own infection. Still, I carry what they dropped— the hope that memory, if spoken, might heal more gently than silence. V. The Global Forgetting We forget in comfort and in haste. We forget with screens glowing blue over our faces, our thumbs rehearsing oblivion. We forget the treaties, the trenches, the names carved shallow to fit more names. We forget that progress was meant to serve mercy. We forget mercy. We forget the smell of bread shared in fear, the way a stranger’s hand once saved a life for no reason but defiance. We forget in pixels, in hashtags of remembrance that last an hour. We forget because remembering bruises the ego. We forget because amnesia is cheaper than apology. Poland forgets, America forgets, the world edits its own obituary for clarity. Every nation hires new narrators, smoother voices for the same mistakes. The forgetting is polite now, marketed as modernity, sold with a subscription plan. The children learn history like wallpaper— a pattern, not a warning. And I, too, am guilty— I look away when it burns too long. But the graves across the street still whisper through the data storm: You are not innocent; you are next. VI. Who Are We When We Can’t Remember? Who are we when the mirrors go blind, when every scar is airbrushed into skin? Who are we without the rust, without the names beneath our feet? Who are we when memory is only a story told by those who cleaned the blood? Who are we when the voice that warned us has been translated out of existence? Who are we but the next forgetting, waiting for a name? VII. The Hope in the Ugly Hope lives in what refuses polish. In rust that keeps its orange pulse, in brick that bleeds beneath the rain, in faces too tired to lie. I have seen the future try to shine— chrome facades, plastic suns, the sterile gods of progress humming in LED. They forget that the first light came from fire, and fire remembers ash. Let the city stay imperfect. Let the walls show their scars like medals. Let art stink of hands and hunger, of what it cost to stay alive. Ugly is only honesty without translation. The wound becomes the window when we stop pretending it is gone. I am septic embodied, a child of ruin choosing mercy. The graves have taught me gratitude, the city has taught me grace. If we must carry the past, let it stain our palms. Let the living remember aloud, so the dead can rest at last. You do not shine, you remember— and I am learning how.

0

Oct 30, 2025

Oct 30, 2025 at 11:23 AM UTC

badwords

The Land-Locked City of Boats

I. A City of Forgotten History You do not shine, you remember. Your bricks still hum beneath the paint, their red worn thin as a monk’s sleeve. The cranes claw upward, tired of grief, but the dust keeps falling like unfinished snow. They call you ruin, but they lie. You are memory refusing renovation— a sentence the architects cannot rewrite, a mouth still tasting ash from a century’s fire. Every wall a lung, each breath another ghost sighing through cracked enamel windows. I walk your corridors of soot and grammar, reading what’s left between translations. Here the new men come with their blueprints, their sterilized optimism, their disinfectant dreams. They think forgetting is progress, that silence can be paved. But the cobblestones speak when it rains; the gutters remember what ran red. And still you rise, not proud, not pleading— only persistent, the way rust endures where polish fails. II. The Honest Lover You never made promises, only coffee gone cold. The morning after is your truest hour— no curtains drawn, no careful apologies, just daylight pressing its thumbprint on the dust. We share the quiet of survivors, two clocks still ticking out of habit. Your streets smell of metal and rain, mine of memory and mistake, and somewhere between them — love, if love can live without adornment. You do not ask to be adored. You stand there, hair uncombed, eyes the color of industry and fatigue, and I believe you. Belief is rarer than beauty now. There is mercy in the ordinary, in the dishes unwashed, the walls unpainted. I can trust what does not pretend. Your pulse against my palm, the city breathing slow beneath its scars— that is enough. III. The Graves Speak Across the street the earth is crowded. Names erode like salt on skin, dates reduced to breath and lichen. Some stones still speak in Hebrew, some in silence. Others were never marked at all. No one comes for spectacle. There are no tickets, no plaques, only grass, and the patience of the dead. I walk between them quietly, uninvited but not unwelcome, their absence louder than my shoes. The wind rearranges petals, small offerings to impossible memory. Each grave a door that never shut, each unmarked mound a warning. They lie beneath the modern noise— the tram, the radio, the soft denial of a city learning to forget politely. But still, the ground remembers. When it rains, the water carries whispers, and I swear I hear them say: We are the sentence you still live inside. IV. The Child of Conflict I was born from the noise after bombs. My blood keeps two alphabets, two silences. One learned to pray while the other knelt in smoke; both survived by accident and argument. I am the beast that carries its own making, a cart of bones pulled by history’s hand. Violence wrote my lineage in ink that stains— love was the footnote, peace the errata. From Russia’s frost, from islands of ash, from a continent that measured mercy in ruins, I arrived American — the empire’s afterthought, a passport printed in amnesia. Yet I walk with their breath in mine. The persecuted taught me patience, the victors taught me how to forget. I have inherited both lessons and spend my life unlearning each. Call me contradiction: a wound that tends its own infection. Still, I carry what they dropped— the hope that memory, if spoken, might heal more gently than silence. V. The Global Forgetting We forget in comfort and in haste. We forget with screens glowing blue over our faces, our thumbs rehearsing oblivion. We forget the treaties, the trenches, the names carved shallow to fit more names. We forget that progress was meant to serve mercy. We forget mercy. We forget the smell of bread shared in fear, the way a stranger’s hand once saved a life for no reason but defiance. We forget in pixels, in hashtags of remembrance that last an hour. We forget because remembering bruises the ego. We forget because amnesia is cheaper than apology. Poland forgets, America forgets, the world edits its own obituary for clarity. Every nation hires new narrators, smoother voices for the same mistakes. The forgetting is polite now, marketed as modernity, sold with a subscription plan. The children learn history like wallpaper— a pattern, not a warning. And I, too, am guilty— I look away when it burns too long. But the graves across the street still whisper through the data storm: You are not innocent; you are next. VI. Who Are We When We Can’t Remember? Who are we when the mirrors go blind, when every scar is airbrushed into skin? Who are we without the rust, without the names beneath our feet? Who are we when memory is only a story told by those who cleaned the blood? Who are we when the voice that warned us has been translated out of existence? Who are we but the next forgetting, waiting for a name? VII. The Hope in the Ugly Hope lives in what refuses polish. In rust that keeps its orange pulse, in brick that bleeds beneath the rain, in faces too tired to lie. I have seen the future try to shine— chrome facades, plastic suns, the sterile gods of progress humming in LED. They forget that the first light came from fire, and fire remembers ash. Let the city stay imperfect. Let the walls show their scars like medals. Let art stink of hands and hunger, of what it cost to stay alive. Ugly is only honesty without translation. The wound becomes the window when we stop pretending it is gone. I am septic embodied, a child of ruin choosing mercy. The graves have taught me gratitude, the city has taught me grace. If we must carry the past, let it stain our palms. Let the living remember aloud, so the dead can rest at last. You do not shine, you remember— and I am learning how.