Friday, June 11, 2010

The Night

The night is absolutely terrifying. It creeps about in the darkest hollows this city has given birth to. The city has nurtured them and nourished their fat proprietors till they burst with bling. Today, people come from far and wide to look into the dark recesses of my beautiful city. What has she become?

The whiskey does not hit the spot on a night like this. It only weighs down your already weary eyelids. It offers no calm, no anger, nothing. It only goes through the already hot blood pumping through your body and mingles unnoticed. Whiskey finds kindred spirit in my blood tonight.

On a night like this, I cry for my city, and I hope, somewhere, she cries for me. If she does not, it would all have been worthless. What was it worth anyway? What did we achieve, my city and I? I can’t say that I know. Somewhere between her crumbling to pieces within the darkest alleys of her being and my taking beatings in all of them, we had an understanding. I would fight for her, and she would stay for me. When did it end? Did I stop fighting? Or did she stop staying? It gets harder to tell every day. It gets harder to tell who I was fighting anyway, if it was just my city and I.

The night pulls closer and I retreat into myself. Tonight, I cannot bear being blinded. I feel as if I have given up on such a night before. I feel, as I must have been then, scared, unaware. Maybe I have given up on every such night. The night is absolutely terrifying.

Then I turn to my city and - my city - she shines for me. Once again, like the thousand corpses she drags upon its shore, I am drawn to her. But I know it can never be. And I give myself up to the night.