In the blazing sunlight of SouthBank City, where life burns with color and contradiction,
Faro Faros walks hand-in-hand with Rita — unaware that shadows trail them like ghosts from the forest.
**LOVE AND SHADOWS IN SOUTHBANK CITY**
*A poem inspired by the moments before destiny returns.*
In SouthBank City, where the sidewalks gleam,
Where summer hangs like a half-remembered dream,
A boy with fire for hair and a falcon on his chest
Walks with a girl whose laughter makes the world feel blessed.
He holds roses like secrets he’s rehearsed in his palms,
Petals trembling like sparrows, like psalms.
His Power Ring glows like a promise half-told,
A story of flames, of courage, of gold.
And she—
Sun-soaked in yellow and bottle-green skies,
Is a sunrise that learned how to walk and disguise
All the wars she has fought in the back of her mind,
All the storms she has weathered, the ghosts left behind.
Their smiles touch without touching, like prayers and like sparks,
Two souls who found daylight after life lost its marks.
But love, on this street, is never alone;
It is watched, it is tested, like metal on stone.
A billboard above gnashes teeth in a grin,
Mr. Clown’s voice slithering, *I am watching*, again.
He is laughter made poison, a carnival’s ghost,
A predator advertising fear like a host.
And farther behind, like a breath held too long,
Stands Ronda Riy—
glass-eyed, brittle, sky-blue and wrong
for this moment so tender,
for this chapter she can’t mend or
undo,
as jealousy stings like a splintering truth.
Yet the couple stays steady—
like dawn and like dusk,
like fate holding hands with both passion and trust.
For Faro and Rita are kindle and spark,
Light in the daylight, flame in the dark.
Her smile is a sunrise he never outran,
His touch is the proof that she finally can
let the forest and battlefields blur in her soul.
So remember this moment
when the thunderclouds come—
for even a hero needs somewhere called *home.*