A Postcard from Philadelphia

Emily, the streets here are dressed in burnt amber and broken mirrors 

put together by arcane artists like you. 

People are quiet, quieter than those back home in the Turner Trace 

cul-de-sac. I think you would like it here, Emily 

I visited Spruce Street Harbor Park, where iridescent fairies 

welcome every outsider, like you and I–

the homes made from different colored bricks and mismatched 

windows with cracked skin.

No one really cares here. 

Coffee shops play mellifluous music 

and the seats hold writers. 

You can hear their racing thoughts taking 

over their hands and pouring them out 

like a glass of large sweet tea back home. 

But they don’t have sweet tea here. 

Emily, the streets are always filled 

with people speed-walking trying to keep 

up with the fast heartbeat of the city. 

Cars line the sidewalks patiently waiting 

to travel to their next unknown destination. 

But the further you get away from the congested corners 

of bodies waiting to cross the blacktop

you enter shadowed corners with redbrick brunch 

restaurants and derelict knick-knack shops. 

Street lamps are dead unless you are standing 

right beside them; only then can you hear their whisper. 

At night the streets are pretty much the same 

just louder. Cars drive by and park in the road 

until their morning headlights shine 

through my window and make shapes on my wall 

from shadows of the trees.

Emily, this place is inviting you to come visit, if only you would listen.