This is how we feed ourselves:

with flour ground from prairie bones,

with shopping carts full of future

landfill, with the myth

of Minnesota Nice, pressed

like dried flowers between pages

of corporate handbooks.

The storm is always coming.

We pretend not to notice

how the sky turns the color

of bruised plums, how

the Mississippi carries our secrets

downstream, how we’ve built

our glass fortresses

higher than any bird dare fly.

In the Mall of America,

teenage girls practice their survival,

hunting bargains like prehistoric

women once hunted mammoth.

Their mothers watch from food courts,

fingers wrapped around paper cups,

warm as small animals.

Winter is not a season

but a ritual of submission:

we learn to walk on ice

without falling, to breathe

through scarves, to carry

summer inside us like a dormant

virus. The city takes what it needs—

our sweat, our taxes, our dreams

of somewhere warmer.

At night, the grain elevators

stand like ancient monasteries,

their shadows long across

the snow. We pray

to whatever god lives

in fluorescent lights

and heated parking garages,

in the endless rhythm

of commerce and decay.

This is how we persist:

not with courage or vision

but with the stubborn grace

of weeds growing through concrete,

of women who refuse

to apologize for taking up space,

of people who wake each morning

to find their city

has swallowed another piece

of who they used to be.