to feel something
Nokyoung Xayasane

In the evening,
about around 8:30pm,
the sky transforms
into a landscape of pink,
touching the walled buildings,
blushing the trees billowing
in the summer heat.

The AC clicks on,
a swirling sound like the rivets
of steel of the subway tunnel,
the sound of something falling down the stairs,
a swirling wake in Hanlan’s Point.

There’s the pink sky in the evening
that purples into night fall,
that blooms into light
peeking and chirping with bird calls.

There’s this place, this street,
walking down Yonge
that hugs and presses against my skin,
the embrace of life and noise and sound,
the sound of giving up
and the sound of going on.

The morning reaches into the sky
following the line of a crane
hoisting a metal crate,
the building blocks of a condo
a skyscraper a home a business.

I said out loud, to no one in particular,
“I want to feel something
like really feel something.
Don’t you?”

And the sky and the trees, the birds,
they answered my call,
and they breathed and they laughed
and they whispered,
“Yes, I do. And I have. And you will, too.”

And the sky changed shape and coloured pink
reaching out to the edges of the city,
touching the cracks in the pavement
where a man and his dog sit
with a cardboard sign.
A man in a cowboy hat stands in front of the Chipotle
and watches passersby.

I want to feel something
like really feel something.
Don’t you?