by Lucia Martinez-Castro ’23
You didn’t want the walls to love you
Or whisper like they did to everyone else
They were cruel and mean and they envied you
And they hid their greed behind a facade of adoration
They were at your back leaning over your shoulders
Towering over your head and whispering through your hair
And sometimes you wanted to shout at them
To kick their balance away and watch them crumble
But the walls had conversed with the barriers
They had known you wanted to leave
And the walls didn’t want to loosen their grip
So they spoke to the pavement
So the pavement glued your feet to the floor
And sadly told you it was sorry
Metros swung by your eyes
Pulling your face to the world the walls didn’t let you see
But the walls noticed your longing
And convinced the heavens to drape its fog across the skyline
So the heavens clouded your eyes and your lips
And gave you asthma
A fate worse than the love you wanted to leave
A resentment that the walls hid behind suffocating intimacy
There is a reason the walls are built.
There is a reason you will always fail.