City that Never Sleeps 🌌✨🌃

Gwyneth Lor
Nov 29, 2022
2 min read

I recently embarked on a field trip to Madrid with my peers for a course in American Documentary to see an exhibition on photography from 1848-1917. To sum up the trip of 3 days, there was loads of socializing, artistic contemplation, gazing and studying of my surroundings, taking in the city I have been once to prior in a different light. It was a feeling like no other. For one, it was a trip made with peers I had yet to get to know better and grow closer to. That had been a success. I had gone alone the first time, wandering around Plaza Mayor munching on a calamari bocadillo, sitting solo, people watching as I devoured delicious chocolate-covered churros from San Gines or touring the Royal Palace and Monastery beside it-- even sitting in contemplation of life and writing in my journal until it grew close to the evening around the park or educating myself around Early-19th Century Spain and purchasing my very first grown-up dresses. This time, it was a heck-load of bar visits and drinking to english tunes... Second, it was a trip so uniquely offered to us University students--giving off an aura of excitement and holiday before the rest of the study grind was to ensue. Third, it was a trip set onto grasping the culture of another--to stand open-minded and have our minds blown with food and drinks among a few others. In a quest to recall my memories in a very familiar, warm manner for my future self and others to look back on, I had written a poem dedicated to the quintessential aura of Madrid.

So here it is, my 'love letter' to Madrid:

Five thousand miles away lies another sleepless city.

With a tinge of blue blanketed by a dim violet haze—

The sky murmurs her name.

She is idle, and lets the songs of birds wake her from her midnight daze.

The sky snickers rays of sunlight onto the curious and wandering—

And she teases her rise.

She is a wave awaiting her crash onto center stage—

Only revealing herself as the clock strikes eight.

Prattling dwellers flow onto the streets

Drawn to brightly lit windows.

They are voracious for luxe and thirsty for banter.