The moon bares down on the lonely city, the city full of life yet still so empty. A city that promises things it can't keep. A city full of liars and lovers, one in the same. Ghosts are illuminated in the headlights, ghosts that creep along the streets and down alleyways looking for ways to redeem themselves, begging for second chances and for phone calls that will never be returned.

Smoke from the abandoned cigarette sitting on the table, left to burn out until it fades away. The woman swaying back and forth, her fingers slowly dragging across the suicide box in her hand, asking for a ride from anyone who's willing to give her exactly what she needs. She doesn't mind what some of the people walking past her say, what they see or do or feel. She doesn't feel anything for herself, so why should she feel what they feel? When the world is numb and there's nothing left but the sensation of losing-- losing herself to the dragons and the demons that follow her home at night that are usually gone by morning. Losing keys, wallets, lipsticks, lovers. Losing everything but the feeling of loss, really. But you can't have it all, and she justifies it like that.

The bars pack in throughout the night, orange light and a hazy glow and eyes and hands that can't keep off things they shouldn't be touching. Or sometimes they can be, but often times, it's one sided. Music drowns out the crying, crying drowns out the laughter, laughter drowns out the sadness. Some people can pretend better than others.

A city of stars that can't be seen, a city of words that can't be heard or said. He's scared to say what he needs to say, but he knows she'll understand. As he runs away, the city of stars behind him, he knows she will understand, somehow.

If nothing else, she had him for the longest time. If nothing else, at least she had him at all. No one believed they'd last, and of course now, they would be right. But everything started to fall into place before now.

She was a little girl when she met him; a frightened girl. She didn't know how to react, what to say, how to feel. He brought that out in her, she realizes now. He took away from her one of the greatest things that she should have kept to herself. But she knew that despite it, it would have torn her apart. If he hadn't taken it away, it would have taken her.

Her secret weapon, the thing she feared but loved the most. Some saw it as a superpower, others saw it as naive. In place of the burning cigarette, she saw a firecracker ready to explode and fill the sky with color. The people she saw were her friends, though she did not know their names. She saw the city in a way that made it more alive than the dead that roamed it. Translucent beams of light killing the darkness, streaking through the bleak sky into the wake of the night.

As he ran away, she realized all at once the morning that she woke up alone that he had stolen that part of her. Her bedroom grey, the flowers on her nightstand now crisp and blackened. They once stood so tall and yellow. Her bed cold, her head twisted, her heart missing. What replaced the bump, bump, bump of her heartbeat was the sound of the tears falling from her eyes onto the book that she clutched so tightly to her chest. But you can't have it all.

Her headlights illuminated the ghosts in the street, only now, she saw herself in them. Wandering aimlessly, searching for a missing piece that has yet to be reimagined. Looking to be forgiven, begging for redemption, crying for salvation. But all she was, was forsaken.

She thought of herself as she looked at the woman swaying back and forth, desperately aching to be held by someone that would never love her the way she needs to be loved. Calling someone else -- anyone else -- just to fill the void that was left in his place. She imagined herself as the cigarette; the lonely, abandoned stick burning to no aim, and to no end except disintegration. That's all she felt she deserved.

When she imagined the city, it had never looked like this before. But now all of a sudden, the city wasn't so alive. It was destructive, much like her thoughts after 2am, or the way that she cried herself to sleep every night. Like the pills hiding underneath her bathroom counter, like the gut wrenching feeling of a release from death in death itself.

Nothing hides heartbreak quite like the city. The city of stars, the city that refuses to fall even though all the people in it have fallen beyond the point of resurrection. Her lonely city, her lonely streets, her lonely medicine.

Her, lonely.

j.q.