by Kate McCane from Short Stuff Stories

A poem about city life.

I would like to write  

one of those sweeping 
beautiful descriptions 
of empty landscapes 
where you can go 
miles and miles 
and never see another person 

Where the cold emptiness 
is still somehow beautiful 
and the loneliness 
feels like  a prayer 

But in truth 
I am a city girl.  

The furthest I can get 
from another person is the 
distance from one apartment 
to another.  

My moments of solitude

are snatched, secretly, 
late at night in 
empty train carriages, 
after the shows have let out 
before the drunks 
have stopped drinking. 

My gorgeous sunsets 
are framed by the 
space between buildings; 
they highlight smoke stacks, 
steeples, fluorescent adverts. 

Sirens fill my nights 
and the stars are 
pale and insubstantial 
against the glow of orange streetlights. 
 

And yet there is beauty here 
in this teeming mass of strangers 
pressed together into an impossibly 
small space. 

There is a thrill of connection 
in looking into brightly lit 
office windows to see the workers 
working late 
and a strange camaraderie 
in the shared detachment 
found in people stuck 
in long lines in grocery stores. 
 

It is not empty here 
and I am not alone, 
but this landscape is 
still 
 

beautiful.  

Kate is an Australian living in Berlin. She can be found at Short Stuff Stories. She publishes additional material for her supporters on Patreon.