The Place I Call Home

The place I call home is ever-changing,

rapidly breaking out with grey buildings 

high above the legal limit.

They’ll pay a small fine for it—

a dent in their return from which

the investors will spur more real estate, 

without work being done to improve the subway, 

to accommodate the influx of residents 

who’ll confound the social ballasts

of our city.

I tend to worry in bird’s-eye view,

watching change progress as a time-lapse

in my mind’s eye, while yet to arrive 

at the unfolding of our fate:

my strained space in the mobs of influencers

setting out our way, 

while the rising water line’s 

eating at the edges of our city.

The scope dilates and the clock hastens.

My city buckles under the weight of 

its swollen river demarcations,

its innards blackened by the soot

of our ambition and flattened by the

leather boots of those still milking 

the energy of our city for content,

even as the world’s ending, 

and the skyline’s being eaten by its own reflection.