Ode to Chicago

I live in Chicago. City of grey. Sooty snow. Flattened parking lots and gangways. Concrete, quarter chip bags, and street cats. When you wait for the bus you have to stand close to someone just to catch some warmth. I have a car now. I like singing in it, but mostly when the windows are up. The city looks like shit from a car and makes me feel autonomous. Like I’m watching it on tv. I am going through a lot of anti-freeze. That color makes me think it’s not very safe. I have to use it though because I’ve been avoiding potholes like landmines.

It would be asking too much for warm weather because this is what makes us us.

The lake is a wasteland and the sky, grey almost always, and even when sunny, the wind burning my face as I stretch to feel it over my cheeks. Infinity’s existence seems covered in a film of smog that can’t protect me from all my little problems. I feel big and this seems like it’s it. The pressure builds. But I stay. It’s what makes me me. They’re too laid back in California. There is no reason to be laid back here. Where? My front porch is covered in ice and plastic grocery bags whirl around my door. I turn off the space heater to use the microwave or blow a fuse. I turn the heat down when I leave. I miss my neighbors.

First break of heat with last years little kids now big on my block. Barbeque in the air and police driving opposite down the one way. My neighbors sit on the porch and share any alcohol they have. Laugh that I’m the only one not a cousin. We talk about the neighborhood cats and which one is having a litter.

In the park, I wish I didn’t have to wear headphones to pretend that I don’t hear the little boys telling me something about myself, something that they might even think is sweet. Something that many girls think is sweet too. Something about how they (I) look.

And so, I like it when women smile at me on the street or say hello. But they usually look down even when I say hi first. Or we’re both wearing headphones or pretending to talk on our phones.

Youth and age, race, gender, class. All that makes us incapable of connecting as our true selves. The little boys who holler are mostly sweet and fucked up from their daddies just like me and most everyone else, but they watch tv and have piece of shit uncles and play Grand Theft Auto and no one tells them different. And they’re powerless anyway so why not take it where you can get it.
-samantha