Buildings climb skies, stretching their glassy limbs upward as I, sprinting across their shadows, feel my feet slap the asphalt, begging to get away. Away from the life that dares hold me captive, from my slave drivers called nine and five, from the people who try to depend on me. Lean on me. Make me hold their weight until it crushes my very existence, leaving me nothing more than a piece of forgotten litter lining the city streets. Then, stepping on the cluttered urban stairway, they climb up the superficial ladder of success, gripping the shoelaces of their predecessors, allowing themselves to be dragged along the rungs’ splintered wood, until given the opportunity to throw the shoe’s owner down the ladder and onto the filthy road, landing with a satisfying crash.

The heroes and geniuses, all having been used as nothing more than a stepping stone, resign themselves to the black and white streets, hiding in the shadows, begging to be forgotten so that their failures will also eventually vanish. And I, seeing the corruption in every corner of every building, flee. Not because I am afraid of what will become of me, but because I am afraid of what will not. What I won’t do, won’t see, won’t experience. And here I find myself, wrapped in the city grid, each step numbered and lettered, corporate and cold, until the people, too, lose their names and become nothing more than 1st and 5th Avenue. 42nd Street. Each labelled with a blinding brand that vanquishes the colors from their souls, until they disappear into a monochromatic existence of oligarchies and wealth.

Men wrapped in soiled grey blankets slump under awnings of four star hotels, greedily clinging to each gust of warm air that bursts out of the revolving door, until they are shooed away by crisply dressed doormen who tell them, “Riff-raff like you can’t be seen around here,” then open golden doorways for businessmen and their escorts, who drip with red velvet and fur and perversion.

I run past the hotels and corporations and boutiques, away from the traffic lights, the pollution, the sirens, until I find myself lost in the jungle, where black tangled vines hang haphazardly from telephone poles, and the din from thousands of chiming insects ring and honk and buzz. Where every day, men hunt each other, with guns and pens and phone calls, edging on murderers of jobs and careers, then stopping to wipe crimson blood onto their primly pressed suits.

Away from it all I fly, never daring to look back at what I’m leaving, never stopping to help a man on the streets, then pulling myself onto a rust covered bus at the expense of knocking another man off. As long as I am not caught in that hurricane of greed, I am safe. As long as I can free myself, nothing else matters. Away I will run until I can forget about everything and move on with my life, succeed in my dreams, live up to my expectations. As long as I can save myself, no one else matters. It doesn’t matter who I step on or hurt. As long as I am better than them.