city panorama.

the alleyway's slithering gasoline rainbows made us suck our lips into our lungs until our tongues were red and our blue faces seemed to slide into the sky. they all whispered, 'i double-dog dare you to swallow life, thick and heavy, like a pill and slip into ecstatic dreams' and grinned, candy-faced. we were born, red-handed and suckling, to the slums – she carried the underworld on her back, yellow-teethed and skinny-necked. sometimes the sun would purse its lips and blow the soot away from our eyes – we'd rub our noses and sneeze, knowing that the light would shine in the dirty, rose-tinted windows of the skeletal buildings but neglect liberty's fire.