The picture leans toward me, crooked and polite,
roofs doing yoga under a radioactive lemon sky,
windows stacked like misplaced books,
every color humming a different off-key hymn.

I arrive as a tourist without a map.
The air tastes of graphite and bubble gum.
Some architect sneezed and the city never recovered.
So I check in at the corner of Cyan Street and Magenta Memory
and let the lines decide which way is “up” today.

---

In this universe, gravity is a diagonal suggestion.
Nothing really falls, it merely slides into another sentence.
Houses lean on each other like tired theories after a long conference,
arguing quietly in teal, fuchsia, dunkelblau.

The first law states:

Every wall is secretly a door, but only sideways in time.

So I put my hand on a green façade and feel last Tuesday.
Somebody inside is boiling water for tea in the year 2041.
Somebody else is just now inventing you,
scribbling your name into the yellow sky with a broken pencil.

The second law:

Roofs are ships that forgot the ocean but remember the waves.

Look closely: each curve is half-sail, half-shoulder,
lifting itself against the blank noise of the background.
When the wind comes, the buildings do not move—
the sky rearranges itself around them,
like a shy lover changing topics mid-sentence.

The third law:

Color is a form of speech therapy for concrete.

This is why the blue band near the eaves
is telling its life story to the pink column,
why the emerald panel keeps interrupting with “ja aber, ja aber,”
and the orange sliver at the corner
swears it once was a sunset in another life.

---

I walk through the district with a glitching compass.
North is wherever the turquoise planes intersect.
South hides behind chalky shadows.
East and West are currently out dancing together,
leaving only “forward” and “backwardish” for pedestrians.

A woman made of chartreuse light
leans out of a magenta rectangle and asks,
“Excuse me, which way is ‘Monday’?”
I answer, “Links unten, third floor,
just past the corridor where elevators dream of stairs.”

She thanks me in three languages at once—
“merci, danke, thanksalot”—
and vanishes back into the paper architecture
like a subtitle that knows too much.

---

The city council of Colors-That-Clash meets daily at dusk.
They discuss zoning laws for emotions:

• Sadness may not exceed two storeys unless reinforced with poetry.
• Euphoria requires additional fire exits and frequent coffee breaks.
• Irony must always be set back from the street,
  behind at least one layer of sincere confusion.

Tonight’s agenda:
Should lime green be allowed to touch sky yellow
without a permit?

A long debate follows.
The blue band filibusters with a monologue about oceans,
despite never having seen water.
The grey slab in the corner keeps muttering
that everything was better when buildings were just boxes,
unbent, unbeautiful, obedient.

Finally the pink panel slams the table:
“Genug! Let them touch.
Nothing explodes when colors kiss—
only meanings do.”

Motion carried.
The lemon sky blushes three shades brighter.

---

Meanwhile, down at street level (wherever that is today),
I try to find a straight line to lean on.
Mission impossible.

Even the shadows are drunk on geometry:
swaying, doubling back, forgetting their objects.
One shadow has lost its building completely
and now follows me like a stray concept,
asking for spare interpretations.

“Not today,” I tell it.
“I’m busy mistranslating myself.”

So I switch into Denglish emergency mode:
“Listen, Stadt der schiefen Häuser,
du bist ein Baustellen-Herz,
a work-in-progress pulse,
and I am only passing through
mit meinem kleinen Kopf-Beton-Mischgerät.”

The walls nod, or maybe they crack.
Who can tell the difference from this angle?

---

dada break:

klirr-klack, lemon-blech,
eine Linie springt vom Dach,
ruft: “Geradeaus ist over, Baby,”
landet quer im nächsten Satz.

---

Night does not really fall here;
it just adds another layer of grey pastel
over the existing confusion.

Neon windows blink into being,
each one a tiny stage where
microscopic tragedies forget their scripts.

In one rectangle a plant decides
to photosynthesize gossip instead of light.
In another, a tired teacher erases a whole semester
with a single sideways gesture.
On the topmost bent roof,
a lone antenna whispers to distant galaxies:
“Sorry for the noise, we are still learning perspective.”

I sit on the edge of a turquoise beam,
feet dangling into unfinished space,
and admit that I, too, am badly drawn.
My outline wobbles, my colors contradict,
my inner architecture never passed inspection.

And yet, in this crooked quarter of the world,
I fit.
Here, failure to be straight
is simply called style.

---

Tomorrow the lemon sky might turn violet,
the roofs might decide to dive into the ground,
and the windows could reassemble as a sideways staircase
leading exactly nowhere and perfectly there.

When that happens,
I’ll return with my diagonal heart,
ready to live in whichever angle
the day invents for me—

for in this tilted neon building choir,
nothing stands upright,
but everything somehow
manages to stand.