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A bustling city is like suffocation.

Skyscrapers double as high walls, and if the air pollution doesn’t suck the life from you, they will.

At rush hour, the business suits scatter like vermin. Freed from these prisons, they litter the streets, and not just with Starbucks and McDonalds, but with footsteps and fingerprints.

I pass them and see nothing more than wasted flesh. Maybe they see the same in me, but chances are, they see nothing at all; their eyes unable to discern uniqueness any longer. I pass them and feel the filth of their ignorance layer my skin, like a membrane. I wonder if their water proof, stain-resistant khakis are also bullet proof. I doubt it, and I smirk.

Everyone’s making names for themselves now. Escaping trust fund shadows. Building their own lives and fulfilling their parent’s dreams. American dreams. Nice stuff and modern things coming quick.

Who’s the last one on the board to install heated sidewalks?
What size are your wife’s breast implants?
When’s the last time you forgot your stepson’s name?
Where are your winter homes?
Why should you not kill yourself? There are no good reasons. No one would care for more than a month. Your wife doesn’t love you, she loves your money. Your kids don’t even call you “Dad.” And ask yourself this, would you give a shit if the intern who forgets your coffee at least two times a week blew his head off in the bathroom? And he’d probably care even less if you did. He’d probably even laugh a little.

Their scent is predictable. Every cheap Younkers fragrance that came with the teenage sales girl’s phone number you can imagine amalgamated in a must only comparable to formaldehyde. You know what they say, everyone is dying. I pass them and I hear nothing. If you try hard enough, so much noise can become silence. Cinematically, this is where the bombs go off, but who has the balls for that?

Only the kids whose names you forgot. The kids you raised.