The City In My Heart.

There is a city. It is made of red clay and dust. Huge red clay buildings are stuck in the ground, they reach dizzyingly high into the sky, swaying gently. The streets are paved with crimson sand and emptiness. A cold ruby sun fills half the sky, sends its rays down on the abandonment, and bakes its loneliness into to the clay.

No one lives there.

No one goes there.

But in the sky, there is a face.

And the pair of eyes in that face hold all the sadness of the dead city.

As I stroke the bricks of the sky-scrapers, my hand pulls off tiny pieces, its stains my fingers with its colour. The streetlights are rusted brown, globes long since blown, power source long since diminished. There is no glass in the windows of the buildings, it has become sand as broken glass will after so long. Road signs stick out of the ground haphazardly, invariably bent, with writing on them that cannot be read, in a language that no one can remember.

I treasure my city.

It is the place where no one can go.

I walk my beloved streets.

I sit in the sand on the roads.

It is utterly dead, no living creature lives there, not one fly buzzes in the air, not one climbing vine crawls along the scarlet brickwork, there is not one worm in its sand.

Its beauty is only for me to see.

Its silence is wonderful, only for my ears to hear.

The softness, the coarseness, the smoothness of its contours and edges are only for my hands to feel.

I love my city. She is in my heart.