Vignette City 24.

*** ‘Vignette City’ is an ongoing project of daily writing and urban photography ***

Off the bedroom of your small carpeted apartment

there is a tiny patio with a cinderblock wall and

beyond the wall there is a busy alleyway

which serves at night as a kind of freeway for the wet

burn-outs of your neighborhood (whose numbers are mighty)

and often you sleep with the sliding glass door open,

serenaded by the cacophonous alcohol hoots

breaking glass catcalls of the alley. Often you sleep this way,

with only the screen door closed against the night,

but always you make sure that the screen door is locked.

Quite a lot of stock you place in the power of that

little lock latch you flip each night before bed.

Why do you do that?

Is it a recklessness that makes your heart thrump?

Or an invitation to the casual wickness

of a world that, while vile, is at least more alive

than you?

Is it because you have never re-learned to sleep alone?

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