Open Sesame City

“You got to be seen in gold, watch out for the new kind
you got to have old gold, like some from a gold mine” –The Wiz, Emerald City Sequence

I really don’t know how to even describe it; this molten gold eruption in my body that whispers loudly to passers-by from my pores, that I am wading in the current of all things possible. This city behind me of blurred steel & brick humming with percolating light was once closed to me. This district of naysayers side-eyed me & questioned my very presence. They feared me because of my inevitability. They felt my footfalls long before my shadow touched this town. They knew as I knew I was coming for my things; an already set table, doors held ajar for my entry alone, my name on the mouths of the conduits, taste-makers, plugs, gate-keepers. I am often stopped & asked about my glow. Asked why my cheekbones nearly eclipse my eyes when I smile, as if the sun is an ever present guest in my face. What can I tell them without sounding as confident as the shore that knows the oceans kiss is coming at high tide? Would they believe what I carry beneath my skin is a golden & unending vein of ancestral gains? Perhaps not. But if they played their cards right…I’m sorry…played their cards at all or simply listen, as I listen, to the chorus of my maker and my ancestors, they’d smile into the future’s lens as I do with a litany of open cities to my back, the jingle of keys in my ears.