your eyes protest | it shouldn’t be this dark when you wake up | turn the lights on | pack umbrellas, tickets and cameras | when the sun rises you will uncover its beauty | get dressed | stumble to the bus stop | board, crash asleep | when your brain wakes, uncover your destination | when the noise fails you will uncover your mother’s reticence | why leave when there’s everything you need, she said | is there anything to see there?
how do people breathe here | the wall of walls is suffocating and blind | alone, wandering among glass facades and jammed traffic | wires crisscrossed above your head | everything is timely, so orderly and narrow | could you survive the pool of raw ambition | when the crucible burns brighter, will you melt or will you harden?
gawk at city dwellers | walk in circles, puzzle your way through public maps | wander the busy parts of the city that aren’t real | so spoiled, does anyone actually live here | the fragments of scattered hopes are everywhere | buskers playing horns on a sidewalk | colourful graffiti fills entire streets | every door a history, every street a museum | is there quiet here, or is quiet for the weak of will | for those with shallow dreams
how exhilarating must it be to live here | not forever, but for a while | feeding on the energy but not adding to it
girls hover near a theatre, illuminated from behind by car light | the square is empty, announcing nothing but its own existence | you stumble back to the bus station | camera out, capturing skyscrapers and moving cars | everything you ever wanted was here | but nothing you truly needed
Rebecca Kempe is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Ottawa, Ontario. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in flo., The Ampersand Review, and elsewhere. Her plays Each on Our Side and Signal Breakdown were performed in the 2019 and 2021 editions of the Youth Infringement Festival, respectively. She recently self-published There’s Nothing to See Here/Nothing Happens Here, a two-part zine which explores the stagnant (but at times welcome) stillness of the suburbs she grew up in through photography and prose. More of her work can be found at www.rkempe.ca and you can find her online as @arbeeko.
