This City.

I look out across the San Diego River Valley
To some, these sights register as a beautiful portrait of metropolis.
People zipping across concrete and asphalt set to a backdrop of blue sky striped with the cottony fibers of clouds, framed by palms and cliff edges.
To me, it registers as a prison I've been trapped in for far too long.
Anything I've planted here, has gone through the same growth pattern:
Slow to sprout, quick to mature, cut off by frost or drought before it blooms.
Dead and withering it falls to the ground and is consumed by the beetles and the earthworms.
Smothered by doubt and reality.
This town has claimed far to many of my lives.
And yet I keep rising again, in this putrid place, sure to again taste the grit of defeat, the metallic burn of pain.
It is a cycle. And it cycles and cycles.
Wearing an oblong track that burns into the back of my eyes.
Everything I see must now be stained with this scarlet letter.
Everything I think passes by this mark.
I've been living in this city for far too long.
And now this city is living on me.