tracy-Me

I forgot how to recognize my self in the mirror, the pattern of words scrolling through my head: all line breaks but no stanzas. I have seen sun rising red through heavy curtains, shielding my eyes from memories of being able to sleep. Darkness is home now, my figure lying beneath fog - brain fog, they call it - I'm not the only one this disease has warped into excuses and explanations that don't make sense. There is no why. Just a continuation of how. How do I make myself a future out of this?

The hard gray hurts my heels which stick unnaturally in places where tobacco or gum or oil gunk spit black spots like disease, pox spreading on city sidewalks. It's just aesthetics, my problem with the city, a question of color quantity. Square, towering gray reflects cinderblock grays of other buildings; cement sidewalks and asphalt roads rectangle out at right angles, broken by black potholes which gape like the open mouths of gray pigeons pecking at refuse and sludge. I feel small but confined, caught in a lifeless maze of dark walls and darker doorways hiding the pulsing energy of thousands of hearts beating in tim