Echoes of a Wounded City

By Wash-Anigboro Harry

Under a ceiling of ash and fractured light,
The city shifts in its uneasy sleep.

Each breath drawn from the marrow
Of forgotten days. Asphalt and stone

Pulsing through the veins of the metropolis,
Carrying the echoes of faded footsteps.

The buildings loom, their spines brittle, bent
Beneath the weight of time’s indifference.

Windows glisten with weary light,
Not shining, but sweating—

Droplets of light sliding down glass,
Like tears too tired to fall.

Walls, a house of voices annotated by
Bruises—bodies crammed beyond breakpoint.

Graffiti scrawled like desperate prayers to indifferent gods—
Each stroke, lush as silence,

Clawing at permanence, colours bleeding
As though the walls wept.

The streets writhe beneath my feet,
alive with the tarred memory of motion.

Every crack is a scar, every scar a map
Leading nowhere yet holding everything.

Air—humid amalgam of rust, smoke, and
The faint sweetness of something burning

Out of sight. Above, the sky is a wounded
Canvas, stitched with barbed wires,

Its stars swallowed whole by the city’s ceaseless
Hunger. A solitary bird cuts through the smog,

Its screech piercing through the hollows of our soul
-less sky. The city dreams in shattered fragments,

Its pulse syncing with the shadow I’ve become.
In this version of the nightmare, a ghost wanders

Through the wreckage of unsaid unheard prayers.
Gathering pieces of light too jagged to hold.

BIO:

Wash-Anigboro Harry is a recent law graduate from Redeemer’s University. From Delta State, he has a strong passion for writing, particularly poems and short stories. Twitter: @to_phainomeno

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