I want to paint the colours of the rainbow on everything I see
I want to splash the light frothy foam of my less-than-awesome cappuccino onto this page
I want these black, white, and grey squiggly lines to capture the moments that make my days

All the heavy thoughts and deep emotion poured out and catalogued through the ages
The stories of our greatest, deepest, and weakest selves
The highs, the lows, the darkest, the brightest times
Odes to lost love, songs of beauty,
Essays on the human condition -
All worthy subjects for immortalization

But I'd like to save a little corner of the page for -
My daily fights with that abrasive flaming-red outdated alarm clock
The late afternoon sun filtering through the slats on the early twentieth-century windows in the stairwell of my office building
The discarded spider web hanging forlornly from the hardback Oxford dictionary in the bottommost corner of my bookshelf
The rusted signage on the dilapidated building on the corner, that was once a hub of commerce in this ever changing, ever constant, city by the sea
One of these days what was by the sea may become​ part of it;

I want to remember what once was -
Not because of its aspirations to grandeur, or the many, varied battles fought over it;
It is not always attractive or easy to love, it is often old, tired, confused, even ******, in the evening lights that misunderstand its cracks and crevices
But it has stood here, and drowned here in the deluge of hungry people and high tides and poor drainage and unrepentant rains and it has survived and thrived and been home to so many millions and saviour to so many more
And I am loath to let its inheritance fade and fall into the abyss of forgotten things..