We find our protagonist scaling the summits of a two-story apartment
to hear the Landlord’s rooftop proclamation:
You have skyscraper expectations of an anthill
The infrastructure is not suitable to sustain you
Your innards will buckle, then collapse
You required the cooperation of support beams
But the cornerstone has been fractured
Roark would appreciate your design, while the rest understand only failure.
Shrinking from the attic beams, our protagonist stares blankly at concrete hands
Through bay window eyes and wonders
With mind of fiberglass, to insulate remnant intellect,
How sand begat glass begat self
But thoughts become muted, vision obstructs
as blinds are lowered on another city’s Tomorrow
and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, echo tenants
But it is already Yesterday in the suburbs, and Today was never woken
The basement lights turned down, our protagonist begins to feel
Nothing appears the way it was remembered
When the lights return, the recessed stop receding.
The statue of our heroine appears in daybreak--
Marble begat skin begat selflessness
Today peers over the horizon and grants a glimpse of the small of her back
But brief, so the moment is gone
Before anyone can decipher house from home.