Are you crying?

It's just the meager past

If I look up

Into the digital screen

Of the sky

*

I sigh and look out over the city, my city. The one I have been ordered to protect. The city that brims with hate and malice for those like me, those with...additions. I look down at my right hand, the one that makes whirring noises as each joint moves, the one that is cold and hard, like metal. There is no skin on this arm, only tightly-bound wires forming false muscles, titanium carved, forged into bones.

I look down from my perch atop a light pole, out over the park, past the walls that enclose this one spot of green, and I feel what's left of my heart wrench. This isn't right...parks shouldn't be cut off from the world. Clean places shouldn't be hidden. I wish I had the courage to tear down this metal and stone prison, these invisible bars that keep the butterflies from flying free, dancing through the air that they helped light in the days long ago.

*

The wind's song

Is climbing up the high stairs

We can hold it if we listen

We can awaken from

The dream where we were hurt

Don't cry

*

As I jump off the pole, landing in in-near silence, broken only by the whirring of my right arm and leg. My left eye, which is bright green, lights up, sending impulses to my brain, telling me that there is a wall nearby. I can see the wall with my good eye, the brown one, but the false, green one would let me see it even the blackest night. I hate it.

I reach up to touch the shining circuitry that runs over the left side of my face, the side that was scraped off when I was twenty-three, nearly seven years ago, when I was rammed by an enemy and dragged two kilometers by my motorcycle. That's why I've been added on to so much, why I have so many false parts.

There was very little of me left when I was finally recovered - not found, recovered. I was still alive, but barely, so they said that my body had been recovered. I had never been found, as far as I was concerned. A piece of me broke off, and was never found. I'm still lost, even though it's been seven years since that horrible day, since my world turned to metal.

*

The city has fallen ill

Raised in a distorted cradle

We don't know why we fall in love

*

But now is not the time to be thinking of my past, it's the time for me to be thinking of my city. I hold my left hand, my real hand, up to the glowing pad beside the door, letting it read my fingerprints, a code that will make it open.

It slides open, and I feel my stomach turn once, just as the black air floods my lungs. I look down from this place, this building placed so high up that the smog can barely reach it, and I want to cry. My city is dying from the inside, bleeding to death without realizing it's even been hurt, because it's the city's heart that is slowly letting its lifeblood drip out.

The city doesn't dare turn to its heart...that black and twisted heart that has created people like me. Things like me.

*

Strongly

Holding arms together

We're just running away

Through the streets

Lets hide inside

The crowd

*

The last time I was here I was waiting for someone, a man. A man who said he loved me.

I pull on my jacket, the thick blue fabric catching on my metal arm before finally complying and sliding on. The black air is always colder than the green air of the park. Always.

It had been seven years ago, almost to the day, since I saw that man. I had just been let out of the hospital, and he said he needed to see me right away, that it was important. I came, wearing the ring he had given me only a month before, the ring that swore we were going to be together.

When I saw him waiting here, looking out at the city that was not yet mine, I was happy. I loved him, I suppose. There was nothing else I needed - I didn't care if I had been ripped apart and put back together, as long as I had him I would make it through.

He asked for his ring back.

*

Always giving a

Cold and white aluminum kiss

I'm a dispenser so

That's ok isn't it?

*

I would be turning thirty in four days, the anniversary of my birth; what would have been the anniversary of my rebirth. The day I was to have been married.

He told me that he couldn't love a machine, someone who had additions. He said it was like loving a statue, something that wasn't truly alive. He said that I was the city's toy now, a mechanical doll programmed to do what I was told.

Sometimes, even now, I wonder if he was right.

*

The wind's song

Is reaching this world

From the end of the ground

Even you who I don't trust

Is going into my heart

*

I wonder what I would be like today if he had married me, if I hadn't been rammed, if I hadn't gone into police work. Those thoughts scare me.

I am what I am, for better or for worse, and there's no reason for me to wonder what else I could have been. I am what I am, not what I could have been. I'm not happy, but I am proud to know that this is my city, this ill, dying city. This city that I will save, somehow.

I turn and head toward the lift that will take me back down into that cold, dying city, and I let a smile spread across my lips. I'll do what I can, with what I have, to bring my city hope. I will save this city, protect it with all I have left.

Even if I never find my missing piece, I will hold this city in its stead. I will save my city.

*

But we're holding onto the dreams

That hurt

We're just running away

We're holding onto the

Lovely present

*

I've made my choice; my life or the life of my city. I will make certain that my city lives, even if it means giving up all my memories, the ones I covet and hold close to my heart, the ones that hurt and made me laugh, the ones that bring tears to my eyes. Tears of joy, sorrow, hate and love.

I'll give it all up to save my city. I'll give up my past to hold the present.

And I will save my city.