In vicos

I've wondered these streets to many random times before, 

ever hoping for something a little different each time, 

and yet getting nothing but the same. 

I've mapped the stars I see each night like pavement squares, 

each one counted step by step leads me home. 

On most days the stars are gone, 

on most days my own thoughts are all I have, and I call these the terrifying times because my minds a cold dark labyrinth of, "do that," "please don't!" "why? "when?" "how could you," and "still wont". 

It is an unyielding ocean pounding on my aging bones weary until my breath routinely slows. 

The high walls around me are always a mirror image of myself, 

some mini storms twirling violently and amidst them, a low whisper that sounds like help. 

These streets they change with time, 

and with time these streets change, 

the souls in them a constant feud, though on some days they turn a colorful page, 

where the hero in their story is they, 

and they no longer feel like alone is the safest place anymore, 

to them the worlds bigger, 

wide and maybe the flat earth theory now seems a little less fake. 

The river between them washes over their skin into a good story, 

ones the kids in them would have been pleased to relive. 

They now see clearly their broken pieces, 

they laugh off their unfulfilled dreams and still wish upon a shooting star, 

as they listen to the tunes in the wind breezing calmly among the trees. 

Their African stories no longer pebbles on this lonesome street to be ignored, or forgotten, 

they are the welcome rain droplets on a dry summer day, 

randomly falling from the skies to nourish their earth. 

Flood the streets with forgotten memories of places, 

that this isn't it, 

memories of smiles wide, and laughter echoing in the wind, 

and in that moment they, I, no longer feel like the lonesome candle slowly burning itself away.

27/01/21

'In vicos' is the latin word for 'the streets'

"Ars longa, vita brevis."