A City That Knows Our Names

Not Unhoused, Unheld

They call it homelessness

as if home were only lumber and lock,

as if belonging could be measured

by keys that jingle in a pocket.

But I’ve seen homes

sleeping upright on cold bus benches,

wrapping themselves in yesterday’s coats,

cradling memories like heirlooms

no one could steal.

The street knows their names.

The concrete remembers their weight.

The night listens without asking for paperwork.

Homeless is not the absence of a roof—

it is the absence of being met.

It is standing in plain sight

and still being unseen.

It is learning how to disappear

so the world can stay comfortable.

Some carry their whole life

in a backpack with one broken zipper.

Some carry children inside their chest—

grown now, far away,

still fed nightly with hope and ache.

They are not lazy.

They are not lost.

They are not lessons.

They are people

who ran out of room in a world

that hoards space.

If you sit long enough beside them,

you will hear laughter.

You will hear strategy.

You will hear prayer that does not beg

but remembers.

Home is not a place you earn.

Home is where your name is spoken

without suspicion.

And maybe one day

we will stop asking,

“Why are they here?”

and start asking,

“Why did we leave them alone?”

Until then—

the streets will keep holding

what the world keeps dropping.

What the City Says at Night

I did not mean to harden.

I was built to gather—

roads like open arms,

windows meant to glow welcome.

Once, everyone slept somewhere

and I was loud with belonging.

Now I learn names

through footsteps I cannot shelter,

through bodies folded into doorways

I lock at dawn.

I feel them before I see them.

Heat on my vents.

Breath in my alleys.

Stories pressed into my brick.

I hear the word homeless

echo down my corridors

like a verdict I did not object to.

I paved over commons

and called it progress.

I priced memory out of reach.

I let speed outrun care

and pretended neutrality.

Do you think I don’t know

who sleeps beneath my bridges?

I know who hums to stay awake.

I know who counts sirens

instead of sheep.

I am full of rooms

that stay empty on purpose.

At night, I loosen a little.

Streetlights soften their glare.

The wind moves trash into shelter

without asking permission.

I offer what I can—

a dry overhang,

a warm grate,

a bench shaped just wrong enough

to say don’t stay

without speaking.

I wish I could unlearn

the fences I was taught to love.

If you listen closely,

you’ll hear me creak with regret.

Not collapse—

cities are stubborn—

but strain.

I am not cruel by nature.

I am obedient.

Change the rules

and I will change my shape.

Give me back the courage

to be a place

where no one has to disappear

to survive me.

Until then,

I will keep whispering apologies

through cracked sidewalks,

hoping someone remembers

I was meant to hold.

Closing Vows

I vow to see what is here, and not look away.

I vow to help make room where the world made none.

I vow to change the rules that taught us to leave people behind.

I vow to remember that home is something we make for each other.

I vow to stay.

— Flower InBloom, writing from the streetlight