die Stadt des Geistes

...he remembered dreaming, remembered silk sheets and canopied beds; a fire casting odd shadows into corners, creating ragged edges at the furniture's boundaries. Outside, it was always snowing; there was only winter, only the dark howl of the wind offset by dying embers crackling in the fireplace, shooting up like drunken fireflies 'fore dying mid-flight. He remembered soft linen brushing against his skin, remembered the drug of warmth and it's ignorance to cold and pain.1

He remembered lace and satin...2

Harsh now, draped in a cloak of wind, hair whipped by it, brittle and dry in the cold. Hard concrete under thin soles worn down by use; rubber residue scraped all over city sidewalks. What he knows is this; all he knows is this.  What's remembered is like some lost name; some dream-fragment that lies to seem true.  When his lips crack and are blood-warmed for brief seconds; when the church is full and he huddles deep in the alley between strip club and liquor store; when the money he earns doesn't keep up with inflation or when he doesn't get paid at all; when he catches sight of himself in some awkward sheet of glass and it takes him too long to recognize himself, and even when he does, he doesn't fully believe his eyes--surely it's a trick of wind and snow--it is at these moments that he remembers--what he used to be, what he is certain he used to be. He remembers, and he stands the warmth beside the cold and watches them sizzle: bitter dreams.3

He sizes himself up, measures the memories, and catches sight of himself again: in broken glass he's a puzzle, in water or window he's a ghost. He looks in mirrors and sees himself: dirty and ragged and poor, all baggy eyes and unkempt hair.4

He's a bastard of the city, a lost specter confused by memory and dreams, caught in some no man's land, whisked away by demons of wind.  His reflection tells him that his memories are fabrications, and that, if he could only stitch them all together, he'd be warm again.5