As the days pass, I can feel my heart begin to slowly close like a rusty 15-ton safe, and I’m terrified that if it shuts, I won’t ever be able to open it again. With each piece to the puzzle of my dreams that I find, another fades and it seems I am remaking the picture. My ambitions have become distorted by big business fantasies and marketing fallacies. I used to think about education for the poor and now opportunity has sunk her hook into my heart so deep that I can’t leave her door… not even for the ones I love because God knows they don’t deserve my trust. During these reflections, I’ve felt compassion for the first time in months. I am the product of a realization that when I began to build I had nothing to lose. My dreams of fighting poverty with policy were demolished when I realized I would have to bankrupt the liquor stores surrounding the schools like a S.W.A.T. team. Even then, I’d probably have a price on my head because with a lack of health care, I would have taken one of the only substances that helps to mend the broken hearts who share numbers with the stars. Everyone loves happy endings, but this is as bright as it gets around these parts. Life will never be fair for the under-privileged for as long as cash is king. They say diamonds are forever and still the divorce rate is crawling upwards of 51%. For as long as cash is king, the poor will sell their diamonds for rent, or food, or drugs and so the women have begun to tattoo their wedding banners to express their eternal love; maybe in hopes that the next man will be forced to buy a diamond big enough to cover any unwanted memories. It is always possible that a retirement thick with reruns and jeopardy is appealing for the unambitious, but while they pledge their intoxicated souls to a pool of relentless regrets, I will spit into the face of fate and continue to walk chest forward, shoulders back, for as long… as cash… is king.