You Can’t Change This Town

But.

You can’t change this town. But this town can change you.

Something broke in its heart long ago. And that something will break yours too.

The roads are cracked and the wells are dry. The clocks are stopped and only the soil asks why.

The people are things and the things are people. Everyone wants to be someone but no one’s anyone.

They built it out of something that wasn’t meant to last. What was it? We can’t remember anymore. All we know is.

We used to watch the stars in the sky. Now we watch each other with burning eyes.

The poor ask the rich for some kind of desperate grace. The rich tell the poor the gods made them this way.

The people work each other to the grave, with the whip, to the bone. Then they ask who stole their freedom.

You and I were put here to dream and to love. We’re in exile from the garden in a place we never belonged.

This town was made of something like sand, not stone. It’s not crumbling. It was never here at all.

What can you change in a thing that never was? You can’t change a mirage. But it can change you.

When the fire in you goes out, what could have been is ashes. That’s what they made this town from.

That’s why it falls down the higher they try to build it. And that’s how the heart of this town broke so very long ago.

Umair

October 2016