I can’t hear the harmony

of modernity and peaceful savagery

That lines the streets and serenades

the morning walking through

In fact, I hear nothing.

A numbness, not awe, has frozen my perspective

The city is stagnant, I am still

The police

The ambulance

But to no avail,

For I am trapped above all sentience

My penthouse is grand

Few others can afford this

View others walking below as ants

Who travel as a grain of sand

Falling without aim in the hourglass of time

I’ve built myself up and away

In an attempt to

To touch the sky and say

Here are the stars in the palm of my hand

Isn’t it grand?

But the black sun is hot

Its obscuration due to smokestacks, pipes, and cigarettes

It casts a thick smog of gray, a shadow of shameful heat

I never thought that far.

I never thought of the sun as a star-

A burning ball of fire that melts the wax

The wax from which I’ve fashioned wings

But unlike Icarus I don’t return to Earth

My consequence is to continue burning in the sky

Burning with unbridled rage until that too fades

Leaving a skeleton of horrible indifference

This structure not only scrapes the sky but pierces it

Casting a shadow of despair

Over miles and miles of dissatisfied

city blocks

Delaney Johnson is a fourth-year undergraduate honors student at the University of Florida pursuing a triple major in Psychology, Linguistics, and Italian. Her background as a flautist often influences her work. She is writing her first collection of poetry at this time and her translations of ecopoetry from Italian to English will be published in the university magazine Delos in 2025.