“You look like a whore.”
That’s all I remember about my dad, and that all his clothes were fragrant with welfare checks and cigarettes. He never wanted me around, he didn’t want a disappointment around to screw everything up. I just felt like a bad dream that was lingering around too long; always feeling pressured to fit in. I never had a clear picture of what was right, or what was wrong. My mother was too busy obsessing over the materialistic things, she was too concerned how the world would perceive her. She didn’t have time for anyone else, but herself; she was too egocentric.
Nobody cares about people like me, all we do is cause trouble. Our wishes wasted on the person we thought would be there for us. I realized when I turned thirteen
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The night closes in as the scarlet leaves leave a fiery haze in front of me. I close my eyes and imagine I’m at home again, dreaming of the girl I used to be, even though that girl is gone now. Silver metal against my wrist and an unfortunate smell of coffee blowing in my face is a clear picture of consistency. Arrested for the fourth time in the past two weeks for doing what I had to do to feed myself.
I learned at a young age that life passes by quicker if you just pretend that everything is a dream. Growing up in one of the roughest neighborhoods in the Bronx refined me; it prepared me for all of the bullshit I was born into. Both of my parents being divorced, and having no siblings, I turned to the streets, and they raised me. Learning graffiti when I was ten, and then dealing when I was twelve, I got mixed with all the wrong people. I was exposed to reality early enough to catch on before being preyed upon.
I’ve walked these streets my whole life, I know them like an old puzzle that’s etched into my skull; it feels like home. But not tonight, tonight my heart pounds so hard I think it’s cracked a rib. My ears begin to ring, and for a moment it feels like a daze. I listen to the muffled gunshots that are fired blocks away. It’s the city that never sleeps, drowned in their own luxurious lifestyles with the haves and the
Outside, a deep silence fell over the neighborhood. This silence crept into every household. Members of the community had a guise of anger and pain expressed on their faces. Everyone locked themselves inside, to lament such a tragedy that has brought sorrow to a twelve years old’s family. Parents fell on their knees with tears in their eyes. This last murder represented the final straw. So many of their own had been murdered by the malicious, metallic, monsters that were supposed to be the defenders of their community. They felt insecure, threatened by the
“All that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart” (96). The narrator describes about the rage of the community and the limit of possibilities. The setting allows you to feel the
“This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”…
I am drawn to this segment due to the descriptive quality given to the street itself and the visual impressions I am able to produce as a result of them. The street had been given the ability to imitate various aspects of what would normally be found inside a home. For example, the phrase the empty hat-stand trees, brings a specific image of a trees with long branches that are absent of leaves, reaching towards the sky and awaiting for an item to be hung on them. As well as the snow resembling carpet in the dead of winter. While the houses and apartments were enabled the capacity to have the feeling of being nervous.
The stone streets were a veil at this time of night, with who knows how many menacing horrors hiding behind the curtain. The lingering gas hovering over the ground was timid, dispersing at the sight of anyone who strayed near. The moon tried to pry into the city’s shadows, but it was too thick to cut. The buildings were nothing but faded memories: gray, eroded structures that once boasted splendor and beauty. Street rats, both rodent and human, scuttled about in the alleyways, knocking assortments over and fleeing if anyone walked past, just like the gas. A dog barked in the distance. Car horns blared on 5th Avenue nearby. Tank sighed. No place like home.
I run out of the house and to the sidewalk. I breathe in the cold Yorkshin breeze. First stop is breakfast. Inserting the headphone jack into the phone, I smile the second time today as the music blares into my ears. I hum along with ‘Remember Me’ by Daley. I make way to the nearest convenience store. I pick up container of YanYan’s and a water. I pay and walk to the park. I sit on a bench, enjoying my breakfast and music in peace until a pigeon chirps its way over to me. I stop mid-bite.
If the street seemed familiar it is because it here where a production team just finished filming on-site their much anticipated Jack the Ripper sequel as no set designer could even hope to remake the song years-worth of history-saturated cobblestone sung. The night was cool and dark, something the untraveled of “grand” parts would not have anticipated, much less try to understand why people bothered to flock to such an old block.
His and the voice of the city, the voice of Chicago. She, as a place, can’t handle me every day, and neither can Alex, but I need a place and a person who can. I need a place and a person that can love me for all of me: for my anxiety, for my depression, for my sporadic and inexplicable dissociations from reality. You cannot make a home out of a person or in a city that makes you feel as if you are difficult to love because you are broken. I am not my mental illness, but it it is an element of my identity that I cannot remove. I told myself that my soul could belong in Chicaland, in Portago, but the city tells me me that it doesn’t, Alex tells me that it
She looked ahead and caught the moonlight that poured through the ivory pane doors, reminding her that the room was not hers. It was never hers. What belonged to her, however, was a shabby miniature apartment that resided in downtown New Orleans—wherever distant that location could have been at that moment. Still, in her mind, Leo romantically considered that this loft existed just for her—a ticket past socioeconomic borders even if it was just for a night. What transpires in the life of a middle-class resident of the city? Would they view the streets as Leo had? She absentmindedly kicked her feet. Questions that needed more digging into displayed themselves in front of her, begging to be answered.
Rain poured on me as I walked home. I was all soaked and as usual, I was alone. It was close to night, and I lived in Del Mar. The other kids walked on the other side of the sidewalk gossiping and insulting me under their breaths, but I tried to not let the voices get to my head. I just kept treading forward. I got to the streetlights and made my across the street to go hike up the hill that leads to my house. My tucked my hands in my jacket pockets and positioned my head down to the dark, paved, and quiet street.
A fabulous woman struts down the streets of New York. Her chin is angled skyward and she is garbed in a type of luminescent empowerment. Her heels click against the pavement, resounding a message of, no, not oppression, but instead an awareness of one’s value and strength. Her eyes don’t frantically scan the crush of people rushing to and from wherever in a daze of paranoia, her gaze is direct and fearless. She does not wonder who her next assailant is, she only seeks out fulfilment that in another time would be vehemently denied her. Weaving an untouched and unimpeded path, she stops at a gently-hipster building designed to appeal to a 21st century woman such as herself. “Now that’s new and certainly progressive” she thinks.
I should be heading out now it’s already a quarter past 11 and I gotta be there before 12. I hopped in my lexus and put the key in the ignition. I drove past the city and decided to take the side streets. The streets are tagged and littered as always. I grew up in the projects of Hapeville, I had to move because mom couldn’t pay rent. Those good old days were way back before I grabbed the pen.
And not just at anytime of the day or the year. But after a nice long rainstorm, around 11:30 p.m. Everything seems to calm down. And sitting on a bench on Main Street, I can look down both ways and hardly see a car. At this time the city just seems to glow with different hues of yellow, red, gold, orange, And green. The water is reflecting the lights from the businesses, the street lamps, the traffic lights, and the few cars that drive through going to or coming from home. The closeness of the stores make even the abandoned shops look as if they are full of life. The city looks cleaner, fresher, calm even. Time seems to slow down so much that it just stops. You hear in the background a dog barking, a train going through calera, maybe a truck somewhere flying down the road. But right here, right now, all of that seems to fade into oblivion. It just you, the night sky, and the sleeping city. And like every other moment, even this has name. I call it contemptment, a rare and powerful moment. In this moment, i’m just a girl with no responsibility, nowhere to be, no one to hide from. And it’s these moment that makes being an observer a gift and not a
Silence. It was too quiet for a Manhattan neighborhood. My eyes slowly opened, welcoming sunlight in, as I looked around my room, I strained my ears to catch for any sounds. I decided to get up and figure out why our usually bustling neighborhood went from noisy to quiet. Walking down the stairs, I was welcomed to a totally destroyed living area, all my furniture against the door, all my windows boarded up with multiple nails pierced into the board. Creeping towards my kitchen, all my belonging looked as though it had not been touched. Opening the oak cabinets, I noticed all my food was in place, including my box of chocolate granola bars, with four left. Grabbing one, I leaned against the counter, my eyes glancing towards the daily newspaper crumpled on the floor. Bending down
Frantically, I fumble for my phone, dropping it in a scarlet puddle and picking it up again. Call the police, that is what you are supposed to do. You want to be a good person, right?. You can’t call the police, or anyone, are you trying to land us back in there? In that damp, dark room, with nobody except yourself to talk to? Two opposing voices compete for my compliance. I try to reason with them but I can hardly hear either through the stressful whining in my ears. My fingerprints are on the weapon. I’m covered in her blood. I have no alibi. I’ve only just been released from prison and I am a criminal, charged and sentenced for assault. Calling the police would be the end of my newfound freedom. Even the end of my life. The phone falls once again from my shaking hands. I stumble backwards over a rock, falling, skin from my brow now on the stone, contaminating the crime scene even further. My chest is heaving. My liquefying legs make me feel sick. My fearful heart is in my mouth, trying to get out. The familiar sound of distant police sirens shrieks in my ears. I’m not sure if it is real or just a manifestation of my paralysing terror.