The streets are saturated in honks and beeps and last minute stops. The pavement is hot from the sun that peaks through from between the buildings. There are no real trees, nothing original from a previous life. The labels all say “Made in BLANK”. Everything is synthetic, created, morphed into street lights and stop signs and hot dog stands. The air is cold, it’s more than just the air, rather the atmosphere. No one talks, no one looks around at the faces amongst them, everyone lives in a blur. A blur of lights, of noises, of darkness. Everyone waits; for the light to change, for the venti, 2% milk, no whip frappuccino, for a confirmation letter that says, “Congratulations, you’ve accomplished so and so”.
Colors formed by light. Music formed by noise. Emptiness formed by darkness.
“Do you hear that?”
“What?”
“That.”
Silence. Because emptiness is a whole lot of letters that mean nothing.
We can spend a whole lifetime without doing a single genuine thing, nothing worth keeping to yourself because of its insignificance. Everyone is so quick to point out their achievements, their strength, and masking their faults behind behemoth words that confuse others. No one is quick to say what they want to say, no one is willing to fall for honesty. Talking is reciting, saying what we’ve practiced in front of the mirror thousands of times until it sounds so believable that it must be true.
Traffic envelops our lives. We fill it with unnecessary necessities, we fill it with people. But never the right kind of people, rather the people we need to talk to, the ones we need to impress, the ones we should become. Never the ones that don’t care if we pick out noises, or if we fart in public, the ones that understand we are more than just living, breathing, cars.

Anna Garcia