Cement City

My Aunt Works Night Shifts

Traffic thickens like molasses

As the summer sun beckons, and

Folks peel away from work to escape

And drive home and rest

At last.

Then there is my aunt

Who takes the twelve hour shift

Filled

By the hard-working immigrants

Who fall through

Society's gaps

To catch the city

When it lapses into sleep.

Her shift ends at midnight,

And like cogs in a clock—

Multi-coloured

With different teeth and tongues that speak the same words of love

Another worker comes to keep the factory chugging along.

My aunt spends the quiet drive home

On a suburban street

That leads to a newly built house.

And the urban life is filled with urban joy

Though not as tall as the crooked towers in Vietnam

When the sun draws short shadows on the ground at dawn

Not the same as waking up along with her sisters

At the brink of a new day.

Not the same, only different.

For her the sun and moon orbit

In the center of the sky

Much like how the best of both lives is achieved when they kiss halfway

Instead of the Canadian borders that edge the sea

Pulling in and out the tides

Of reoccurring dreams

Quite far from my aunt's reach

Especially when no one knows to ask

If she had enough of muscle strain or the hollow spaces

That are yet to be filled with self-realization.

Does her beginning justify a happy end?

Does the path extend from third to first-world fulfillment?