#baotou

The buildings have teeth. They smile with all of them at you at night. You smile back. It’s only polite. 

The Yellow River is hungry. You cut your hand and let the blood drip into the endless water. It is not satisfied. It wants more. It always wants more. 

The earth beneath you shudders. The entire land is a part of it. The bank you stand on was brought here by it, and it owes it a debt. You are not safe. 

You can hear children laughing in joy.  They are always making noise. Sometimes you hear screams instead. You ignore them.

The buildings have teeth. 

You blink. There are ten of the exact same building where there used to be five along the exact same street.  You swear you saw this exact same street last time. 

The streets go empty at night. No creature, man or animal, sets foot in the empty streets past 11 o’clock. Those who do are quickly forgotten. 

The roads are too small for the city. The city is too big for the roads. 

The sun beams down at you. It, too, is hungry. You feel as though you are being seared in an oven. It is waiting for the perfect crisp. It is patient.

The city used to be a steppe. The wind has not forgotten. It cries at night for what it has lost, and brings sand with it in a futile attempt to wear these buildings away.

Only the tourists ride the camels. Only the tourists drive into the mountains. Only the tourists go into the desert.  Only the tourists climb them. They rarely come back out alive. 

The city writhes. It is in pain. It does not want to exist. It is a bloated, swollen thing. It feels too heavy. Its streets are too long. It has too many buildings and too few people, and the buildings are starving. Some of them lie dead and gutted. The others are angrier. Fill us, they say. We are hungry. You brought us to life. Now you must feed us. 

The restaurants are always open. Except when they are not. The rooms are infinite. There are always more families in each one. You open one and find the people and food crammed like sardines. 

Sometimes you see a bike with no biker. Ignore it. It has places to go, too.