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First of all, the city is crowded,

especially in a city like New York.

She thinks about the city that she calls home.

On the other hand, the city is not so bad,

sitting there holed up in her tiny apartment at night

and she slightly raises the window in the kitchen

to let the sounds crash into her.

Because cold winter nights are delicate situations and unpredictable tragedies.

And she said she loved the lights.

On most city nights, the air is a rich sea of her own subconscious.

It lives the chaos and breathes the trauma

and the dangling vertical people sleepwalk through her dreams.

She wakes up all hours of the night in the futile fallacy of existence.

She needs the high found in dark sordid alleyways to embrace her.

She doesn't like being left alone for long.

But her periphery of contact with the world is elastic.

She may crack or shatter but she will never let you see her die.

Her nights are full of rain held in far clouds-

In the city, that is.

Is she submissive and docile all the time? NO! NO!

She is a fighter. Fight, girl, fight! Fight!

The city will squeeze.

The city will squeeze her into a pretty stiff pattern.

The city is a frozen page of earth, melting,

dictated by a change of pace and packaged up in shadow and brick.

She uncrosses her legs and holds her heart for food.

She must eat.

She must eat.

She said her favorite part of the city was its lights.

Sometimes she just sits in her apartment and shouts with her hands.

She loves to dream and her fracture lines

are in hard to reach places.

The city runs through her panting, never allowing her to come up for air.

She wonders which way her silhouette will bend tonight.

She watches the lights for a sign.

But the city is a cast iron sculpture of bars-

and she did not create the cage.

"Get away from me!" she screams.

The city is painted within her-

Brush sprayed and shaped on her heart.

She sits in her tiny apartment, listening

to the hum of her coffin radiator

and admiring the city lights.

Learn more about this author, Jennifer Smith.
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