A city rests in me,
when they cut me open
my salmon flesh, slimy innards stare out
at the empty roads and lonely parks
echoing abandoned footsteps.
A sheet of melancholy spreads itself o'er
my clogged arteries, perforated lungs and pancreas, my dried up bile ducts.
The city's once bustling roads and boulevards, the crisscross of flyovers peep over each other's shoulders
to discover the absence of shadows.
The fossil of love hides under my shut eyelids,
behind shuttered windows of shops, cafes and eateries
vultures circle the sky where once our stories grazed daylong in an unhurried calm,
tiny wavelets of sound bring in a song ~ sad, mournful.
A minuscule of a virus swells to become a demon that holds my city in thrall,
plastic wrapped bones, their queued silence.
A strange disentanglement precipitates;
a stifling stillness slithers its way through the stiffening muscles,
sorrow flies out like a crane,
mingles with the whiteness of death.
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