Reading poems about death preparation in the line at valvoline.
Reading my honda civic manual in the parking lot of jack-in-the-box.
A house looks unattended. On the stoop, there are racks and racks of vintage superhero comic books.
The pages look yellow and poorly taken-care-of. But I don't know much more, I am only driving by.
The mural on the brick has people looking through windows with clouds. Reminds me of a waiting room.
Did you know that this neighborhood used to be its own separate city?
The supreme realization of loneliness busts into supreme comedy.
I can’t hold myself accountable in a diary, I can only hold myself accountable in the public
surveillance.
I feel so guilty for a wrongdoing, but the wrongdoing is just poor timing.
Historic carondelet riverfront painting of a man with a mustache.
Sundays are for self-punishment and fast food depression.
Hot take, the buttermilk ranch is cruel. I threw it in the trash, don’t even want to look at the blue box.
The cat’s tail fits inside the radiator.
I imagined you were here with me, talking for hours.
By writing you in, a placebo effect.
in one city, the air sometimes smells like bits of wheat rotting and the ground always has a layer of trash, like leftovers from a party. there are old painted signs for buildings rubbing off on brick. in another city, murals for films and advertisements are painted on the bodega monthly. someone wrote YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL on a school. in one city, you are driving around in your car listening to elliott smith or listening to the community radio station, for years. in another city, you are walking and listening to your iPod for 15 minutes, or a podcast, or talking on the phone. you walk past the barbershop or the dog-walking business. then the train says: doors closing!!! in the other city, there is a train on a rail, but it refuses to cross many boundaries. in fact, the city is stereotyped by “failures” and both cities are stereotyped by “danger” except the other city has more of a tinge of “excitement” and “success”. in each city, you can have success in different ways, different scales. the scale of success may or may not match the scale of tall buildings you are allowed to enter.
in one city you have a room with a full sized bed and a dresser. in one city there are eagles who speak in weird tongues by the river. one city historically dumps shit into their part of the river which floats down to the other city’s part of the river via gravity. each city wants to feel important, and you want to feel important, too. neighbors in both cities are having domestic disputes that can be heard from the street: shut the fuck up bitch!! in one city you are a musician, and in another city you are a writer. in one city you are a daughter in physical rooms and in another city you are a daughter on paper with words. in each city, trees sit by the sidewalks and fill up with light from the street lamps like porous, spacious lungs.
Delia Rainey is a musician and writer from St. Louis, Missouri. She is a nonfiction MFA candidate at Columbia College Chicago. Her prose and poems have been featured in Pleiades, DIAGRAM, Peach Mag, and many others. Ghost City Press released her mini chapbook ‘Private Again’ in August 2018. She tweets often: @hellodeliaaaaa.