Writing is Freedom - Prose: Streetlights

Prose

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Streetlights

written by: JustWaiting

The dull color of the cheep yellow streetlights barely managed to light up the dark asphalt and instead the moon above me, which seemed to be glued to a black paper sky with holes pocked in it for stars, was doing most of the work. My legs were riddled with goose bumps from the cold fall air- what a time to have nothing other than shorts. When the wind picked up, my hair tossed around like you'd imagine a gorgon's would. One of the street lights flickered, breaking it's dull light like it was shattering the glass of the suburbia I sat in, where the soccer moms all had the same car, and they were the first accessory a man would have, followed by the children that were only for dressing up like the toy dogs owned by Hollywood bachelorettes and childless couples.

Every backyard had a pool, every front yard was perfectly manicured, every house looked like it came out of a southern living magazine with the porch swing out front. All cookie cutter from a catalogue to express your ‘individuality'. You, the men, all work eight hour days, come home and sit in front of the television while your trophy wife, who's worked all day with the kids, makes dinner for you and doesn't know or pretends not to know that the person talking on your cell phone is your secretary commenting how good last night was. Because there's always something better and you have to have it. You have to have that new model car's keys in your pudgy fingers, and you have to have that new girl at work press her lips against your hairy chest because your wife just isn't cutting it anymore.

I stand in the middle of suburbia on the rooftop of a CEO's house while he sleeps perfectly protected by his burglar alarm and his wads of cash, and I'm proud that I wasn't apart of it. Of the mess they all called life, when real life existed where I was. On the edge of reality, walking around your neighborhood in my shorts and tank top in the cold autumn air without you ever waking up to see my presence. I'll be gone by the morning, and you'll go about your corrupted so-called life, unaware that I even graced you with my presence. A person from the real world entering your humble abode, your nitch, and you won't ever acknowledge it. This is how I live, wandering and waiting for life to enter your souls. I try to bring it with me, but it never happens. The opposite of death can only watch as she fails.

I wandered through your homes, at first a wisp of smoke that eventually took a form of it's own from your children's prayers for a friend that was real. Those kids, the ones with the imaginary friends, they're the smart ones. Don't let your kids grow up to be cheerleaders. I'd sit and watch them at night as they spoke with the friends who weren't really there, and I watched them grow up where you didn't. I watched them become the attention-starved adults you are now. Your children will end up the same way too, unless you listen to them. They're smart and creative, and you push it back with MTV and Vogue magazine. They're the future world leaders and you stifle it. Don't hand them a book, don't hand them pen or pencil, hand them the remote. Let them think that models are perfect and that if they don't look like them, they aren't. Let them think anyone who doesn't have as much money isn't as good as you, because they obviously aren't.

Somewhere between birch and river I found your house. Somewhere between washington and jefferson I found your work. Somewhere between your car and your home I found your ego lodged in you possessions. We strive to impress, but for what reasons? Our animalistic instincts tell us if we don't push down the competition, we'll die. We'll drown with the other nobodies and weaklings who couldn't survive survival of the fittest. Darwin is king, God is dead. Faith is nothing and money is everything. How can you bow to the priest and worship the witch? History teaches us nothing matters as long as the public believes it doesn't. A false prophet can make you believe the sky is purple, you just can't see past your own eyes. If you believe it, it's true. Faith is defense, what is real is what's truth. Now we know, we all believe something, so everything we think is true.

I pass through the woods, out of your kingdom. I'll keep walking until the world ends, going between the edge your world and the real world, where the children sit and contemplate their part in the universe. Don't let your hopes drown with you as you struggle on the ladder of evolution. It's all we want, our mark on the planet. Most of us will die without a whisper. Fact of life, six billion people on the planet and the ones in Hollywood with sex tapes will be the ones humanity remembers. Dead white men with property live on, courageous women are burned at the stake for witchcraft. Life goes on, things happen. Fate is what we make it, so why not keep going. If I leave your kingdom, your world, without an impact, just remember one thing. Those cheep yellow lights that flicker in the darkness still have nothing on the moon that's glued to the black paper sky with holes poked in it for stars. So turn the lights out and look up, you'll be a child learning your place in the universe next to your best friend who died with your soul about thirty years ago.