Out here, we are all turned on by tragedy, just so long as it’s not our own.

The late nights and the early mornings were spent alone, listening to Ella croon about sentimental love gazing out the window imagining stars where the blinking tops of skyscrapers stood in defiance to nature and to any hope for wishing.

Soul on top of soul on a small spit of concrete and steel caught in the yesterdays that bleed into tomorrows, with no consideration to the stumbling suckers in the city down below.

June nights pry open the windows that rattle and shake with the passing El train, like a thousand lost loves tossing stones.

It’s an inescapable sickness, the sentiment that attaches itself to cities in the summer. A burning desire to wander past dawn, and then let your bones soak in the steam and grease all through the long afternoons.

I picture her there, on the fire escape, legs kicking thick air, pulling her hair away from her neck. Every salty summer dream beaded on her upper lip gets wiped away by the back of her hand and her tongue can only taste the impression that the dreams leave behind, but can never really turn them into some kind of a tangible understanding. But city summers were not meant for comprehension or for action. Rather, for exhaustive self-love and loathing, punctuated by the cracks between the notes on her mothers old record player.

The screeching of the brakes above and the peel of the tires below reinforce a searing ache for a warm body on cold sheets, someone to still the air jostled by the train rumbling up the river.