Point Paradise Apartments
Part one of three.
The stairs creak and moan,
but I ignore them as I grip the railing.
I'm not afraid of the dark;
there's nothing to be afraid of here.
Only shadows and emptiness.
But even they are preferable
to living in this decaying world.
I enter the building, and my heart races
with the thrill of a forbidden hunt.
The air is musty, but I don't care
Every corner seems alive with potential danger,
but I take everything in stride –
the broken windowsills and rotted carpets.
I wander through the halls, my footsteps echoing
in the emptiness. I stop in front of a door,
and for a moment I hesitate.
But then I remember why I'm here:
to find food and supplies,
not to be frightened by shadows or loneliness.
I knock on the doorframe; it's cold but sturdy.
No one answers, so I enter.
The apartment is dark and dreary,
but I find what I'm looking for in the cupboard: canned food, water, a knife.
There's nothing else here – nothing but furniture, old clothes – but
this will have to do.
I sit down on the sofa and eat some rations,
the taste bittersweet but satisfying.
Then I lay down on the bed,
and sleep comes quickly to me in this dark place.
End of part one.
This was a poetic tale from the city of Lazarus, A dystopian metropolis half sunken in the sea, along with ai art created with stable diffusion / Midjourney ai browser applications, inspired by the words of the poem. War and climate change took its toll on this and every other city we know. This is one of many short tales of a young woman ("the narrator") and her daily life surviving in the ruble of the modern world.
I am adding individual poems to a collection that I plan on eventually publishing into an ebook.
Thank you for reading.
💔Here are a few links to some of the other poems about the dystopian City of Lazarus:
