And what about the cities that we wanted?
The ones that walk around our minds with their backs turned toward the sun,
looking more like Hunter S Thompson every day.
Or maybe they look like Johnny Depp playing Thompson,
or like a million dying Bisons running in every direction but home.
What about the cities that don’t call in the morning –
that said the sweetest things to you the night before;
fucked your stupid heart into your stupid chest
when you’ve been smart enough to keep it out like a dog all these years
then lost the taste for North Buffalo chicks.
These cities don’t blossom flowers for you on Valentine’s Day
they snow in May.
But these cities have the bluest eyes –
they know all the most obscure poems by Hemmingway’s girlfriends and mistresses;
they’ve smoked cigars with his ex-wives. Sadness dies
like blossoming roses in the islands they won’t let you come back to,
their grandmothers grow young instead of old
and women never sleep with whole big rough buildings and sidewalks pulled up around faces,
they sleep with strong, beautiful men as individual as cocktail olives.
When you leave these cities they change their names and pretend they never even met you,
they don’t even wave from across the street or ocean or bus stalled in San Francisco,
across years and lovers and cats we couldn’t fly home from Shanghai.
They know all the big and tiny lonelinesses you have created and they’re giving them all back.
Some cities did not order you.
They did not put you on the menu and no one takes a bite. You go out at night
and its everybody’s birthday but yours,
walk home alone blowing out the candles in your mind.
Whooo one for Denali and one for Wyoming,
Whooo one for Mars and Venus and the Rocketmen who didn’t know how to come home either,
and one for the sun they’ll all fly into.
Some cities are kind and explode behind you, leaving doors dismantled and no address to send letters, bless their souls.
But some.
Let you in like an adult watching children playing a game of hide and seek.
You hear the cities counting to 100 and olly-ox-an-freeing
through open windows and clinking drinks,
you’ll swear to the tallest trees that you climbed them all before and will never forget their names,
but it doesn’t matter.
Cities will try to be ours only for so long,
and then they’ll swallow a whole bottle of whisky and build a grudge the size of Canada.
Cities fall out of love like apples fall from a tree, without guilt, and constantly.
Tess Nowadly is a freelance writer and video game developer living in Buffalo, New York. Her poems and music reviews have been published in local Buffalo publications and she provides resources for Buffalos youth to learn about and learn to love their writing and their voice.