The one word that Google search agrees on when it comes to my home
Is that it is sprawling but no one talks about how
It becomes a part of you:
How the sound of car horns blaring at 3 A.M. is the only thing
That can bring you comfort because it’s the only thing you heard
When you were sitting on your roof contemplating whether or not
To kill yourself when you looked down from the 28th floor and saw
A thousand comets of white light flashing as cars came to and from
Countless humans lives with set timers never knowing when theirs would ring
And they’d drop dead on the ground
In a way the city makes you shrink until you feel
Like you have become one with everything
So much so that death seems more than just inevitable:
It is something to be embraced

Houston and I are ex lovers who left each other behind with doors slamming and plates crashing as we stormed out of the kitchen
Promising to never see each other again
Where every street had a memory I didn’t want to relive
But it’s impossible to escape the vintage reel of my eyes
Projections of faded fingers intertwining
Black and white film never capturing the contrast of white on tan
Playing on my eyelids never ending

Yet we can’t help but find each other
At the other’s doorstep at 6 A.M. because I couldn’t sleep and
Sometimes the only thing that makes me feel okay is
Staring at the skyline as the sunset spills through the cracks
So I nestle under towering buildings of stark gray
Press my palm against the street so I can feel the trembles of high heels clicking
In the tunnels below as stock brokers anxiously check the time to make sure they’re not behind schedule

My father’s watch ticking like bombs going off
As he goes from meeting to meeting
White man in the racist t-shirt
Selling his newest scientific concoction to earn yet another million dollar bill
Wonder if he sees the couch in the back of his office
And misses my silhouette
But I know he doesn’t because how can he miss the daughter he used to have
When he walks around downtown in his thousand dollar suit making fun of homeless men
Tongue spitting that if they worked hard, they could be just as successful as him
As if the American Dream is real and our economy is bubble wrapped in stars and stripes
Not already popped

I wonder when I started comparing my dad to ex boyfriends
As if having a boy with my father’s narcissism and intelligence
Could ever fill the cavity he made when he left
As if I could ever stop myself from looking back
When I pass Montrose
With the life sized chess pieces outside of the Labrador where my father
Taught me how to play chess with infinite patience even when
I’d hide in the bright red telephone box because I’d rather play hide and seek
Than play another mind game because I was tired of trying to figure out
Why Daddy has trouble walking and when I was in fifth grade
I discovered that it was because his spine was twisted and curved
And just like the people of Montrose
Nobody had the money to fix that which was broken
And so they consumed white pills with the promise
That they might relieve the pain

But Dad never bothered to read the side effects of the drugs in his palms
Before thrusting them between his thin lips
And by the time Dad found out that one was memory loss
It was too late and the person my father once was became a ghost forever locked within
The meat sack of a man who never got to experience the memories
That taught him how to be a good father and so I got to know the other side of the man
I no longer called Daddy but stranger:
He has a split tongue and most days, his words stab me like knives-
I should have known that when the city grows dark
The monsters come out and well
Being exposed to a knife doesn’t change the fact
That I have a soft, warm belly

And so now I feel the need to run away from this city with its towering shadows
Where men wait to pull little girls into pitch black alleys never to return
And the clean cut ivory mansions in which Dads kiss their daughters
And the dilapidated houses in which mothers beat their children
And the dollhouse families in between that swore they hadn’t heard a goddamn thing
Because if there is anything that I have learned from this city
It is that just because you have a mechanical exterior and glass eyes doesn’t mean
You can’t have boiling hot veins running under.