big heavy sky

Sometimes the sky can feel so big.

Not so much when it's completely empty, clear and blue, as you would think. More so when it's peppered with small floating objects--stars, clouds, seagulls--in point of reference to its massive size.

When the sky feels so big, other objects on land seem disproportionate. Large billboards so up close dwarf the industrial rooftops below--so close together--industrial buildings piled so close together like metal cars on a train, toppled together.

They must breathe

in unison--in an out--in unison so as not to burst at the architectural core.

The buildings breathe in the hot heat of night. Breathe in the Harlem shadows, shifting in silhouette as we whiz by.

The night sky is big tonight, small electric pink clouds hang so high above. The sky is big, but is not airy and offers no escape. The heavy night suffocates the breath. We race to squeeze through the drowsy buildings before they collapse in on us. Envelope us in the night. And my eyelids are heavy. So heavy.