Rewritten City
by Erica Martin
I miss the places that are gone now
Smoky sweaty air
Grates that shake
And a sloping tunnel that smells like fresh earth.
But as the bulldozer rips them away
At least now the wounds can cauterize.
Far worse are the places that remain unchanged
As the city folds and flips
Instead of ripping
Upending your perspective
Though the materials remain.
Sidewalks and doors
Bras that drip from the ceiling
A painted demon who pukes red wine
A very exclusive bathroom shelf
And the chalky drywall that once smeared our clothes
They look exactly the same.
These mummified sets now hold no players
Or worse, new ones
Traipsing callously through your most haunted spots.
Preserved halls that meant one thing now mean
Nothing
As the city turns its page on you.
So you rewrite it
Your story
On the starchy new page
Rewrite the limbs on the dance floor
The menagerie of smokers by the door
The kneeling people in the bathroom stall
The long chats by unsubtle candlelight.
Erase a few faces
And draw in the new
As the book spine wrinkles
From vigorous reuse
And the erasing
The eviction
The exorcism
Gets less complete every time.
How many times can you reuse a place
A bar, a street corner, a hidden upstairs room, a bed
Before it has no new memories left to give you?
Just a chaotic mess of the old ones
Laid on syrupy and thick.
So you reshuffle the pieces
Braid the bones into mismatched sets.
They clink and twitch
And fit together
Under the dark power of your scribbling hand
But not into anything whole.