Anonymous cities are echoes without sound
Smoke without fire
Reflections without objects.
They’re unmoving memories painted on mirrors;
Run-on sentences
that got winded from sprinting
and trailed off into ellipses.
They’re vacuous skies you could fall up to,
getting caught in the smoke cloud trapeze.
Other faces look away quickly
because eye contact transmits pathogens,
so sunglasses are medical masks.
Roads split off from context,
Uprooted from routes.
These cities are reminders
that sometimes our creations become indifferent to us,
Detached from outgrown seeds
Like pods, hitchhiking on wind.
Emily Kirchner
Emily is a surrealist illustrator and writer. She is currently pursuing a degree in early childhood education to become a behavioral specialist.