Chicago
20,000 years ago, when the temperature became just right, a great glacier shifted.
It scraped and pressed into the earth,
digging and cutting in a northerly direction,
losing pieces of itself to dissolve in its haste.
If I want to, I can
sit on the second floor of the library,
close my eyes, and hear
waves.
10,000 years ago, someone first flexed their feet on the land next to the big blue expanse, and
called it
“home.”
At the edge of Northerly Island,
after the sky has become purpled with
night, I can look across the
water, see the steel and glass and
stone, glittering, glittering, with
human vibrancy.
6 months ago, at
three in the morning on a Saturday,
when I am laying in bed and hearing the cars on North
Sheridan Road and staring
at the streetlight-city glow projected onto my opposite
wall,
it stamps itself onto me, a claiming, like
a sticker on the bumper of a car, but
inside of me,
in some prouder place.