This is the place I’m supposed to call home
Then why do I feel so foreign here?
Like a first time tourist lost within a country where no one speaks English


Yet, at the same time
I see the same faces
the same places
The menu at the diner around the corner never changes
The streetlights come on at the same time each day without fail,
except for that one down the street that’s been out since before I can remember
Never changing, always stagnant
Like an iPod stuck repeating the same bubblegum,
boy band
pop song from 2004


And I feel my stomach turn
my face turns green
my temperature rises
I am sick
of this place
I am tired
of this place
I am sick and tired of whitewashed, backwards thinking of “I’ll take care of myself -
***** anybody else.”
Because this might be a town
but it is anything but a community


And one day
hopefully soon
I will escape the invisible bars that trace the outline of this town
that are continually getting smaller and smaller
as my dreams become bigger and bigger


I can no longer breathe