San Francisco

by Haze Fry

Haze is a junior in creative writing at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. They have work published in several literary publications, including Synchronized Chaos, The Weight Journal, and Parallax Journal, and have performed their poetry at the Youth Art Summit in San Francisco and 826 Valencia. When Haze is not writing, they can be spotted cuddling their three cats, holding their python, feeding their tarantula, or rescuing insects from being squashed.

I am a newborn in this city

as I wander past missing cat signs

and tinfoil wrapped cannabis

between blackened gum and pigeon shit.

Feeling hair sprout like moss on my scalp

as I inhale distant cigarette smoke,

somersault on sidewalk squares drenched in piss

and I giggle.

The kind of giggle that is only cute

on a baby.

I am perched upon stacks of people

rummaging in their tiny, cluttered kitchens

or crafting loft beds out of tattered blankets

or using checkered boxer shorts to block the leak in the ceiling.

We are one apartment

that hugs itself in spearmint painted bricks,

incubating the neighbors scurrying

in and out the doors.

I’ve watched my nose grow in the lobby mirror,

watched my knees metamorphosize

from tender and crawling

to mobile and scarred.

My lungs were raised between threads in the bloodstained carpet,

metallic saliva and wood chips,

each speckle of soil on my neck forming permanent moles.

This city is a dirty yet iridescent wart

on the polluted, voluptuous body of the earth.

I’ve never questioned why I live here

on the top floor gazing down like a pigeon

at families teetering in the bakery line

and cars slicing the headlights off other cars

like fruit.

We let yogurt and granola ferment on our tongues,

crafting faerie villages in our breakfast bowls

as we watch queers birthed by raindrops

drizzle down the crosswalk in leather coats,

their lively voices snaking their way through our window pane.

I’ve never wished I was somewhere else.

Somewhere where the streets are lined with pointed rich houses

veiled in baby pink

and white.

Where pompous noses are upturned and eyes look away.

Pristine, safe, quiet.

Where they live.

I would rather take the crowded 33 bus

back to where the bus stop glass is shattered in glimmering polygons,

where I can politely greet the pigeons good morning

and hear music shaking its hips through car windows.

I would rather exist under faded yet thriving pride flags

and tiptoe across barren medians

with no socks on during evening rain.

This is where stories are collected like butterflies.

Where the people have holographic hair

and smell of insects, smoke, and mud.

Where I can be authentic as the alphabet

slipping from the city’s tongue like poetry.

I know your mother,

dusting her cheekbones in her sheltered vanity,

would not approve of where I am.

Or who I am.

She would scowl at the metal dangling from my nostrils

to match the silvery broken lamp posts,

purse her lips at the trans flag dimpling my cheeks.

But in this city my body is a mural,

creatively weird as street art

and valuable.

The unearthed worms on the concrete after rain

and the stunned hummingbirds

blinking, frozen on the feral sidewalk —

They need me here.

So I will bask in the mystic fog,

my spine damp from Dolores Park grass,

and I will climb my stairs

as I twirl in the scent of sweet potatoes and kale,

cat pee cozied up in the carpet.

And I will stay in San Francisco

until I turn to condensation on the dimly lit windows.