City Slicker

I'm not from a small town where everyone knows everyone. Where we stop to smile, greet, and wave. I'm from the capital, where the roads are scarred and the pollution in the gray sky is terrorizing school children with asthma before they even learn their ABCs. I'm from the city with the most violence. Car break-ins, assaults, and murders. Where people spit on the sidewalk, where the homeless man sleeps at the bus stop. Where every year, the same politicians promise if we vote for them, they'll be the ones to change this hopeless city. Then they turn around and use our tax dollars to vacation in places I can't even pronounce. But, I learned to drive on those scarred roads. I paused and waited on the playground as my weezy friends got out their inhalers. And I cried as many of them inevitably moved away. I gathered with hundreds of others on my city streets to protest those same politicians and seen the homeless man from the bus stop awake from his slumber to cheer us on.