Somewhere the line between my dreams and the waking hours had merged, with no clear divide, and I swam in building entrails which were explicit and out of place in the dawnish silverness, noticing when I looked farther across the devastated skyline an alien, wispy blue smoke like corrosive clouds. The place of people’s violent selves had materialised, and that aggressive joyride was manifested in burnt-out-shell estates, strewn sneaker boxes, and whirring helicopters. Unusually, I embraced the movement, hoping that the good bits of the mood would remain, and that the unexpected communities we discovered could survive any return to normality, and its selfish drive towards a devilish completeness that we thought was in ourselves.
* In an instant I knew the inevitable loss would be with me for a forever through which I would try to pinpoint why there’s one thing that you must miss and cherish despairingly because it can’t be yours.
*
Dreamlike and sooty air whistled through the narrow gap between the houses as I too pushed against it, all in a tremble of fantastic auburn light-hollowness. Along the way carnival-atmosphered humid months had escaped my grasp as they sped through, blurring the bigger picture to a dot. Now in the after-fire subdued lucency we struggled to hunt down the frail moments that we wished we’d embraced in the manner befitting such fleeting wonders. Our shadows chipping away at the threshold, wading in time, blending into the falling dusk. In those park lanterns the passing from one era to another was tangible but in inky light we attempted to summon the deep courage from preceding games won.
*
Imperceptibly, our city was now not our city, or maybe the original core carried on while being overwhelmed by the influx. The Metropolis Redux buzzed like no other incarnation, gleaming smiles filling up hospitable passageways that were adorned with illuminated pink massivesigns. An altogether new vibe. While I was inside this high-spirit frenzy I didn’t see how the place had inimitably changed, I simply noticed the overturned exteriors, the transformed frowns, and noted how it encouraged me to be lifted into another dimension. Then later, I considered how the signals from the first city were still present, as screeching dim aftershocks humming, and are there now too, crying, along with weak embers of the other mood.
© Copyright 2018 John Maher