Somewhere in the City

Tom McFadden

While the city clings to the end of night, a still sleepy short-order cook begins to prepare sustenance for the coming day beneath a café kitchen’s lonely lightbulbs while outside, in the dark, brushes of a street-cleaning vehicle sound their approach, then fade back into the dark. Somewhere in the city, an urban nomad briefly opens his eyes on an alley bed of cardboard slabs, wondering why wonderful tomorrows never came, then recloses the eyes that seem no longer to know the way while elsewhere in the city a smile seems to form inside sleep, then pulls the soul of a songwriter into awakening. Out of bed and toward a cluttered desk she hurriedly stumbles, listening to her mind, to grab pen and nearest paper, happily jotting down notes before they disperse so a new song can stay. Then she stares out, at the dark, listening to the music play. Sirens inhabit the hours, lonely headlights of police cars fall onto warehouse walls, and taxi drivers rise groggily for the start of another day. Somewhere in the city, an old security guard’s ball of keys rattles as he finger-searches without looking for the right one to open the gate, for, before you know it, biographies will revive in all parts of the city and the multi-colored lights of the tall, disparate buildings will rhythmically extinguish, one by one, like a beautiful, dramatic, nocturnal picture slowly unpainting itself.