No, Cities

No, cities aren't invisible
as Calvino would have them.
Mine very much asserts 
itself into passivity
and deceptive tokens of progress. 
Parks and buildings and lights
render its townsfolk wide-eyed
and approving even at the expense 
of their speech. They don't worry.
They have nothing to say. 

Yours annoy differently
but you love it anyway.
You love its narrow streets
reeking of decay, its people
bumping into each other
shoulder to shoulder,
its loud speakers sitting
at entrances of cheap malls,
its barkers and passengers
running for cutting-trip jeeps. 

Your voice seizes me
whenever I turn around that exact 
corner where you narrated
your nameless walks across
these sad streets going
nowhere in particular.
You identify with these people
that go by many names:
the poor, the working class,
the wretched of the earth. 

One day I will run away 
from these cities
and will be addressed
in a different name,
pretend not to have known
anyone from here.
Where my birth place is?
I forgot. 
I'm not good with places.

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