An Ode to the City

written by Maud Quilici

illustrated by Kateřina Panešová

I have always felt that the city enveloped me

In its stink

In its warmth

In its lonesomeness

The city sleeps when I don’t

It embraces me

City streets run in space, lure me in

I am caught in a web of things to see

Each car tells me its passengers’ secrets in a whisper

The concrete melts in the summer heat

It fragments under my feet

Islands of lonely people move about

I have no body

Only eyes like empty shells that take everything in

I fill them up with visions of life

No restlessness

There is a unity in our separateness

People

Leave stains everywhere

They seep into the ground

As they bleed

As they vomit

As they piss

As they die on the pavements

They vanish the next day

Pieces of them still remain

In the air, if you look closely

In every anonymous parcel of man-made block

All the artificial light shines on their faces in the night

Envelope them too

And the air is solid

And the sounds are too faint to be heard

And the lights are too low

They glow even in the night

The city ropes me in

Won’t let me go

Once it takes me

In its underbelly

I will seep into the ground

I will spread like ink on a letter

A desperate letter

And evaporate the next day.