We lack the life that we create

We've mastered the ability to manipulate our surroundings. In each direction I can maintain to look, I catch the glow of blue-brushing steeples and mountainous mounds of cold steel, forged floors, and brick undergrowth. We are gnomes of unspoken talent, erecting elaborate models whose stature and girth rivals that of anything found in nature.

The small partial remnants of pre-humanity lie cupped between cragged metal peaks, awash with benches, playground swings and garbage cans. Newspaper and bottle caps are deftly swept aside, past the tottering feet of youth and the life they chase in joyous yelps and cries of freedom. How I long for those days. The days where we could spread out on the ground in the magnificent heat of summer, inhaling the sweet smell of grass beneath our faces. We cawed with the birds as we scaled their treetops, and drowned like fish in the warmed pools of chlorinated water. Our bodies were browned and our hearts were filled. A scraped knee was a temporary and ineffective injury - a way to mark my territory with a bloodstain that came straight from the soul. So many of those streets and trails now contain a trace amount of my heritage. From whence I came, I soon shall go.

But the heat of summer is no longer magnificent. It is a burden, a death-threat; the sun is the emblem of inconvenience at which I shake my raised fist. He is worthy of nothing more than curses, curses I speak with the pained voice of adulthood, "Take your blaze elsewhere, you are not needed here! I desire moderation, comfort, stability and routine - all you offer is a scathed and burning reminder of what it is to feel, what it is to love and run and jump from rooftops into swimming holes! You represent all that I loathe!" I muster hardly a grimace as I fumble for the door handle that leads into desperate hope. The rush of cold and dank air-conditioned humidity blows back the peak of my slick, crusted hair, craftily configured to attempt to hide the receding lines of age that poison my thoughts. The familiar touch of the black leather chair beckons the sinking contours of my ever-changing form. I slump into the habitual. Monday has come again, and it always feels the same.