"A City in Reverse " by David M Alper

At first, the neon light is taken away and closes itself,—

the signs remove their name, the subway forgets how to

go. Every brick throws itself apart from the mortar, every 

window pulls back from the glass and is the same sand.

The roads curve in, held as tightly as a mouth that reveals

no secrets. I say to myself— there is no loss if anything 

comes back to its birth. There is no loss if the street light 

is not bright, if the clock does not make a sound, if the

skyline descends and hides again in the river. But what 

does it mean for us? Our steps are canceled, the laughter

that we shared with the pavement disappears. The lovers

who never separated and the argument that was solved 

with silence were both non-existent. I tell myself— 

there is no loss. There is no loss. But I am where 

my name should be, and there is nothing but the breeze.

David M. Alper's work appears in The McNeese Review, The Bookends Review, The Argyle Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. He is an educator in New York City.