Seasonal affective disorder, the minds that are affected by the weather, shining with the sun is out and crying with the clouds, but what do you feel when you can't see the sky?
What happens to the souls who no not heaven nor hell, for looking up and down all they see is the same, buildings consuming the sky and monorails consuming the earth. It really is a nice day out.
Another shift ends, yet your mind never shifts, I see eyes looking straight ahead on a man with opportunity. A neat suit is meticulously kempt and shoes that would shine, provided there was a sun in the sky. You collect your coffee order, the world doesn't rest, so why stop when the woman at the counter asks how you are? Every minute late is three dollars you don't make, after all.
Weeks go by, the seasons change but you don't, your mother's stopped calling and you don't even know it's a public holiday. You show up to an empty office building, a dark looming expanse that takes in ambition and turns out spreadsheets.
Where does your mind go on a dreary evening(?) when the dim lights of the underpass all fade away. How are you supposed to find sleep when the days blend together into one mundane mesh? I see you, the humble apartment on 41st, your quiet mind sandwiched in between acres of chaos from all sides. It's easy to keep your head down when there are ten storeys above you.
So much happens in the city, but none of it to you, one may wonder why you'd move out here just to become even more reserved. Everything plays in double time here, a crescendo of rhyme with no reason, millions of trains of thought all headed in different directions. But in the eye of the hurricane you somehow found peace and stability.
I see you walking to work, a light briefcase and a hollow smile, eyes in a daze like a deer in headlights. You've left so much behind to chase the ever elusive white whale of what? An office job? A day off every fortnight and a four room apartment? Pot plants without sun, phones with nobody to call, and a lonely home on the busiest street in the country.
Where are you now? It's so easy to lose you in the avalanche of people racing to work, to school, to the future. I'm not worried, it's not like you go anywhere but work and the bank. You're the best in your field, yet you stand atop the mountain of work in solitude, the alpine of the mundane, so distracted by the ground you don't notice the horizon.
What time is it again?
I wait for the train, to see you return wealthier and more stoic each passing day, a rigid routine that remains untainted by the distractions and inconsistency of others. But you never come. You never got on that train, yet you never stopped to see anyone. Your bank account grew bigger that day, everyday, but your heart remained as pure and empty as your apartment below the black stars, nobody would even think you lived there. Nobody would even know you're not coming back.
A city so full of life, but you won't be remembered.