the city sheds its skin like a snake

This is a picture prompt from The Sunday Muse, prompt #168. Okay, I know it's a wee too late to post there.

image from The Sunday Muse



the city sheds its skin like a snake


change
you can see it
slowly surely
like the way dead skin cells
fall from the body
old houses
fall down
for steel monoliths
the way peasants
bow to kings
and
you are back in the city
it has changed
it has not changed
much
now we look for
a good cell signal
and the cafes
the way the signs
change their fonts
and the friendly old waiter
who serves you no more.

you can feel the sudden
rain that falls on you
cold as ice.

more broken asphalt
detour signs
they are still digging roads
to pile in more cables
to power
warehouses and schools,
penthouses and tenements
you sidestep orange cones
and puddles
the foreign workers in
luminous vests clawing
at the road in excavators
the smell of tar
rising from the summer road.

you can feel the city
shedding its old skin
like a snake.



21/07/2021
**********

Shared at Writer's Pantry #81 at Poets and Storytellers United.

---

I love my city, even though it crushed our little shanty home and made it a container port. Now I like it's tree-lined streets, streetlights that work, 24-hour convenience stores, and air-conditioned malls to escape the heat. The whole city seem like a theatre, us brisk walking to the subways, the traffic lights changing red to green, the mother pulling her crying child along is an actor, the boys pushing a ball at the basketball court are living their dreams. And even at night the city never sleeps.

- dsnake1

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2021