A Night in the City by the Sea

Echoes in the dark

Photo by Lukas Robertson on Unsplash

This night too will collapse under its own weight like all the others that came before.

—Daud Kamal, “A Remote Beginning”

Sea an echo —

Silver of the waves disappear into the shroud of the stranger's heart.

The blood’s long gone from the sky. Waves shouldered the dead to the deep. Sand washed away the remnants of the fall. Castles and mounds and forts slowly submerge in the murky waters of a city that heaves and sighs and weeps all night long under its own sprawling shadow.

Photo by Joshua Chehov on Unsplash

The jagged mountains rise on the black of the monitor that measures life in numbers. Blood flows through streets graced with potholes; upwards and downwards in sterile corridors. Wires, tubes, and masks, a city under siege. Maps, etched on the cold of your hands, dissolve into the warmth of my last hold.

A city breathes its last — flatland arrives.

My hand moves across the sand as ripples in mourning carry you to the moonlight.

© Maria Khalid 2025

As always I keep coming back to the sea as a metaphor for loss and parting. Regretfully, the city by the sea itself has been reduced to an unrecognizable expanse — known as development.

The city I cherished is gone, and with it, the people I held close.

If you live in an urban landscape that has, over the years, deteriorated both environmentally and socially into an abominable mesh of traffic, disparity, and crowding, then do share how it makes you feel as you look out from the window at night.

May the brightest thoughts follow you around, even in the bleakest of times.

Writers, bring your chaos, your charm, and your half-baked drafts — Beyond Lines is ready for the beautiful mess. Let’s publish it!

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