Diminuendo
She sits cross-legged on the fire escape,
coffee gone lukewarm between her palms,
watching the city swallow itself—
light by light, window by window,
the urban sprawl pulling darkness over its shoulders
like a child pretending to sleep.
The cat curls against her ankle,
warm comma of fur and heartbeat,
oblivious to the way the skyline
makes her feel like a pinprick,
a single stitch in a tapestry
too vast to ever see the whole of.
Somewhere, a siren. Somewhere, laughter
bleeding through thin walls. Somewhere,
a thousand someones eating dinner,
making love, crying into pillows,
and she is none of them—
just a girl on metal grating,
watching night descend like anesthesia,
numbing the edges of everything,
and she thinks: this is it,
this anonymous dusk, this cup cooling,
this breathing that nobody hears.
The cat shifts. A helicopter throbs overhead.
Buildings blink their fluorescent eyes.
And she understands, suddenly,
with the clarity of cold air in her lungs:
she could vanish into this darkness
and the city wouldn't even pause—
wouldn't even notice
one small light
going out.
-Artwork created in Photoshop and additional image-painting programs
-Poetry written by me
-both copyright to ©Stacy Stephens