Tourist

I have so many things to say-just... no one to say them to.

All my friends are getting their hearts broken

and getting woken up at 4 am with kisses on their necks

and-sure,

that may have been a mistake

but I’ve never had a lapse in judgement where my heart comes into play.

I build others into skyscrapers just to watch them fall

Yet when their pylons and their steel lay in piles at my feet I cry for them

and I tell them that, “Maybe we should have tried to build something simpler first.”

All my cities have fallen this way.

So, somewhere along the line, I decided to stop planning blueprints in the hopes that I’d find my own city on my way down the road…

Yes. I’ve found cities.

They’re beautiful. In personality of population and design.  

And while I frequent them as churches,

My worship is unrefined.

My faith weak,

My mind not yet blind.

I’m a tourist in these metropolitan mountains

Here to see the sights, to culture myself in their museums

to agonize over their beauty and smile at their urban sun;

to memorize their streets and alleyways before I take my taxi out of town.

There is no way I can ever stay.

I am a stranger in a foreign state.

My years in the barrens have conditioned me to leave nothing but the impression from the soles of my shoes in the worn earth

and the photos I capture lay undeveloped in masses in the bindle I burden on my journey.

By some flaw in design I wish to preserve the nature in these cities though their sparse trees flourish with a plastic shade of green; false breaths of fresh air poisoned by others I find akin to me-though vacant and vibrant-that pass me by and pay me no mind.

I wonder if I am the same. Do I, too, wear rust and reek of exhaust?

Are my mirrors reflecting an echo of untruth?

Nevertheless, I will join the hordes in the caravan out of town.

I am one of them and none of them,

our veins reeking of asphalt and mistaken, misplaced apologies.

These arteries still haven’t led me to my highway heart.

I am interstate in a puppet state;

still having so many things to say

and no one to say them to.

This poem is about: 
Me

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