Cities.

They're romantic until they're lived in. Well-lit from far away.

Live in one, and you no longer matter. It swallows you whole and spits you back out on its grimy streets. It strips away your layers until you're just a small, insignificant part of a whole. Part of a whole that will never really need you.

People no longer write but to speak of decadence in them, these cities. Youth, excitement, glamour. Money. Growth growth growth, always growth, always growing, and it's never enough. Growing on the outside.
Inside, it's all dead.

There is beauty in lackluster grit. But oh, that lackluster grit, how it wears me down.

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I want to sleep by the water and sand it away, this shell,
the one I sleep in and awaken in and breathe in.

I want to bathe in the rays of the moon, the ones only seen when there are no lights to compete with it, no buildings to obscure the view. No death to taint my livelihood.
No cage for my spirit. No more iron bars.

I need to find to find the ocean soon,
to know I'm not the only one.