the city is a needle / and i am the vein
the cities blur like headlights through taxi backs.
the broker asks: “long term or short?”
you say, “i don’t know.”
he says, “nobody does.”
you rent a two-bedroom house
in a paarijat-filled street,
buy a queen-sized mattress,
get weighted blankets,
pretend those are arms.
landlords tell you,
“you need curtains.”
you google curtains.
you google return tickets
with a blank destination.
two years pass you by
like rain clouds,
like ash,
like a blunt your lover smoked
and stubbed out on your chest.
your friends disappear
mid-conversation,
mid-city,
mid-love,
leave you with playlists,
coffee orders,
and voice notes that end
with white noise.
your mind is a broken search bar:
how to stay?
how to leave?
how to know the difference?
you stand on a crossing,
the traffic does not part,
you are not Moses.
you are not even important.
the cities keep moving.
you keep
almost
belonging.
the city animal
a cry from the calf slaughtered for medium-rare steak
still echoes—chewing through midday blues,
through glass buildings that sweat,
through a metropolis that grinds.
everyone has somewhere to be.
every building here has a mouth,
a tongue that licks the dissonance clean,
swallows the men rehearsing politeness.
the absurdity of what it is and what it was.
existential, surreal, unnecessary.
emptiness gnaws through ribs and flesh,
spills into chapped nipples and three-piece suits.
suited for city animals,
suited for corporate legends.
plastic flowers bloom through cement cracks.
latte foam covers the city’s incense—
perfume, petrol, despair.
disgusting money spent
to patch holes in our chests,
to patch holes in our pockets.
tap water leaves brown rings on glass,
sugar ants march across the table and laugh,
we sip sadness through paper straws.
when sunlight betrays a good weekend,
the buildings turn brittle and cry in rain.
someone is invited to paris.
someone is filing for divorce.
someone is looking for meaning.
easy to look up, easy to watch the trees.
the city feeds, full and unsatisfied.
the green walls chew the horizon to bone,
spit out what they cannot sell.
i keep walking inside it,
inside the city’s stomach
waiting to be digested.
city of ghosts
i press my hand against the cold glass
on the 25th floor of a building
in a city that does not know my name.
below, a thousand windows flicker,
like ghosts in a house too large to touch.
the streetlights blink, recording, forgetting.
cctv cameras hum in the distance,
red dots watching but never seeing.
the city holds us in its mouth,
swallows our names before we say them out loud.
i think i am alone in this,
until i look across the next building—
different silhouettes, staring back.
a man holding his tea too long, staring at the floor,
a woman drying her hair in yellow light.
their silence is the same as mine.
our shadows move but never meet.
in this city, love happens between
night shifts and neon signs,
in rooms where the walls
do not remember your voice.
here, light flickers like a quiet kind of grief.
here, the sea is always too far away.
the traffic hums below,
horns bleeding into the night.
i watch as the city moves,
a tide of people disappearing into themselves.
tomorrow, the city will move on,
lights will still flicker.
tomorrow, will someone look up at my window,
see my ghost,
and wonder if i was ever here at all?
Miller A. M. is a psychiatrist, poet, and writer based in Bengaluru. His work explores sexuality, cities, memory, and the quiet dissonance of everyday life. His poems and prose draw from Tamil cultural memory, migration, and the emotional landscape of urban India. He is currently completing his debut poetry collection and working on a novel.