As the lease is drawn up for a balcony
that will extend the city’s charted skyline,
the sun drags itself out of hiding on a
bear-trapped leg.

Today,
a nasty type achieved beauty in cotton pants,
a birthday hat,
and a tubercular sweat.

Meanwhile, in Europe,
millions of gnats are donating their blood
to the cities’ food reserves.
The sky pulses with tiny suggestions of heart,
the air swells into warmth like a limb in use,
and dandies prod the proletariat away from the street.

Montreal redefines its mindset
in the grass where I am standing.
In disarray,
the Golden Square Mile drones on and on
about emergency,
a headache that inflates on the breadth of sirens.

And I will return to that familiar haunting
soon enough,
dented by shallow steps of ancients.

Kat Mulligan is a Virginian writer.