I used to have nightmares of a dead city. Its beauty would lie broken across harsh streets. No lights could promise hope or dreams. There was only despair. There was only one need, to survive.
Libraries and public schools had become gigantic eyesores. Their vacant lots echoed like a dead past, and the doors were bolted shut. Yellow police tape threatened, “Do not cross here.” We had no use for these relics. Technology was now king.
I remembered Manhattan. I remembered the bustle of city streets. I remembered being a sardine in a tin can that shuttled across the boroughs. Life pulsed and pounded, but now death lingered over pieces of trash that whispered in the air, the remains of what life was once lived. And where were its people?
A rat scurried across the rails. It didn’t care that I watched. It only had one need, and it would attack anyone that threatened it. It was a survivor at all costs, and then it was gone. And I was the ghost that remained.
Posters bled across the cement walls. Faces blurred. Politicians used to be our best, best friends, but then they became our friendenemies. Instead of smiles now, there were angry glares and malicious grins. They were never our friends.
I returned to the streets, the darkness, looking for life. There had to be life. There had to be someone left. I couldn’t be the only one here, and then I found them. They were lined up, waiting for bread, hungered and broken, and my heart broke with them. No, there was no life left here.
This city was dead. Its past was buried in glass museums that nobody would visit. Stores that once thrived were now showered in broken glass and debris. Offices were vacated, privatized, and destroyed like the lives that once clung to it for security, for purpose. There was only one need left, the need to survive, to hope to survive, and dependency was king.
