To you who swept your long hair

Away from your neck in the

Hot humid air in the city cursed with 

perpetual motion

How does it feel to look at yourself with a little vanity in one breath

Then look at your worn clothes and knotted hair in another

The burden of hopeless forever, the smell of 

Sweat, of day-old saliva in your dry mouth, mixes with sweet perfume

That doesn’t cover your stench or the cigarette smoke of the city in the air

Smells of the city, and you, just another poor, hopeful soul stuck in its cage

A man, no HE, walks by and brings with him a soft breeze

He is just a man too, and smells of the overheated skin that the whole city smells of now

Cooking flesh 

But he walks by and you freeze

Body frozen, eyes too scared to move, still glued on your beautiful, cursed self

To break this fragile, false moment 

But you can’t resist bending, curving your body towards him

Underneath the concrete shadows 

A dying flower first seeing the sun