Chicago

20,000 years ago, when the temperature became just right, a great glacier shifted.

It scraped and pressed into the earth, 

digging and cutting in a northerly direction,

losing pieces of itself to dissolve in its haste.

 

If I want to, I can

sit on the second floor of the library,

close my eyes, and hear

waves.

 

10,000 years ago, someone first flexed their feet on the land next to the big blue expanse, and 

called it 

“home.”

 

At the edge of Northerly Island,

after the sky has become purpled with

night, I can look across the

water, see the steel and glass and

stone, glittering, glittering, with

human vibrancy.

 

6 months ago, at

three in the morning on a Saturday,

when I am laying in bed and hearing the cars on North

Sheridan Road and staring

at the streetlight-city glow projected onto my opposite

wall, 

it stamps itself onto me, a claiming, like

a sticker on the bumper of a car, but

inside of me,

in some prouder place.

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