There’s howling on the streets.

Lions, brawling,
tearing each other to pieces, ripping
flesh.
The smell of blood streaks the sky, and steel
ascends from the abyss, skyscrapers looming ominously
over the bloodshed.
Shouting and screaming and pain ripples through the cities,
and the sour flavor
of death
burns the taste buds with every breath.

But up here,
the stench of alcohol is saturated
by the misty morning fog,
and the metal people are replaced by towering trees,
and there’s silence that plays softly in the
ruins
of my eardrums.

It soothes the pain,
and quiets the
ear-splitting wails that shriek through the polluted air
of the city,
miles and miles and miles and miles and miles
and
miles
away.
So far,
I can’t even see a black spot
on the sun.

And I’m sitting here, on this cliff,
looking out at the green clouds of leaves beneath me,
And there’s a certain sort of
peace
that resonates through my soul,
And there’s blue in the sky above me,
beautiful blue,
instead of black and smog and haze,
And there’s a certain part of me that wants to stand,
wind and sun and gold and the
sweet,
citrus smell of the woods in my hair, and

maybe
just maybe,
I might just

slip,
and fall,

and stay here forever.

 

 

 

 

Hana Tzou is a dancer, a poet, a coffee addict, a city girl, a future English major, the one you go to with homework questions, someone who puts pink raincoats on her beagle, the grammar police, a candle connoisseur, the Queen of Sestinas, and a chopstick master. She doesn’t like being called “Hannah” and loves to procrastinate AP homework by writing. You can find her work in Stone Soup, Teen Ink, Germ Magazine, and elsewhere.