The Quiet Infrastructure

They built the city on promises

steel-veined, glass-skinned,

breathing profit through its mirrored lungs.

Every morning the trains swallow us whole,

deliver us chewed but punctual

to desks lit like interrogation rooms.

...

We badge in.

We learn the choreography of survival:

nod at the right metrics,

laugh at the correct decibel,

trim our hunger into bullet points.

...

Somewhere beneath the pavement

a river still moves in the dark,

carrying bottle caps, oil,

and the thin silver bones of fish.

We call it development

when the water forgets its own name.

...

A child draws a house with no doors.

...

In the boardroom, a slideshow blooms—

arrows rising obediently toward heaven.

No one mentions the hands

that stitched those arrows together,

or the lungs that clouded the factory air

with a cough no spreadsheet can hold.

...

We speak of growth

as if it were a tree,

as if it cast shade for everyone.

But the roots split foundations at night.

The sidewalks tilt.

The elderly trip on progress.

...

Outside, protest gathers like weather—

cardboard signs trembling in the wind,

voices cracking against riot shields.

We call it disruption.

We call it noise.

We call it necessary.

...

At dinner, we scroll past footage

of another neighborhood learning

how quickly sirens can bloom.

The salt tastes the same

whether it falls from the sea

or from someone’s face.

...

There are cameras on every corner now,

small metallic gods

blinking without mercy.

We say they keep us safe.

We do not ask: safe for whom?

...

The river keeps moving underground,

patient as consequence.

The trains keep swallowing.

The screens keep glowing.

The city hums its lullaby of numbers

until even our dreams

arrive formatted and approved.

...

And still, beneath the pavement,

something restless presses upward;

not loud enough to be headline,

not quiet enough to ignore.

(the quiet violence of normalized systems and the discomfort of knowing something beneath them is not right, even if we keep living as though it is)

- Image was created using Google Gemini