Expanding

From far above

the whirring disturbs another night of restlessness.

-

Red eyes beaming straight through the rotten windowpane,

the aging double glazing too weak to hide me.

-

Outside, a drunken man rages and screams the name of a loved one,

presumably lost, presumably buried.

-

His pain practically palpable, I notice my hand trembling

and so I pull the window, with effort and a light grunt, closed to block out his haunting moans.

-

Diggers tore apart the park

and now the ambience is gone.

-

No children by day, nor smokers by night,

no place to hide from the prying eyes of skyscrapers.

-

Instead, now, a grey concrete mess

a mass of expanding ballast

the bodies of the past in the air vents and walls,

another piece of the abstracted cement puzzle.

-

I sit at the desk, the darkness shooed away

by a dim, dirty lamp,

mourning all that I’ve buried

until the morning comes.

-

The next day, my quiet walk

is filled with the echoes of creaking metal

as a thousand cranes prepare a new hellscape

which the next generation will

soon come to hate.

-

Their concrete prison.

-

I try to wipe the rust off of my shoulder

but it’s back a moment later.

This city’s wicked wishes

weighing heavy on my shoulders,

-

its metal still expanding,

still swallowing the land.