Last night, I dreamt of running away,
abandoning this paper town, with its
paper people, full of their shredded
paper hopes, I had the most beautiful
dream, that I ran away from it all,
and I never looked back.

This town, oh how I’ve grown so tired
and bored of the same old street lamps
that flicker as I pass underneath, or the
dimly lit bars, serving the regulars their
watered down whiskey, listening to their
slurred, stale lines of pathetic poetry,
this is where the dreamers have come to die.

These dreamers, oh, how I envied those
drifters, the ones who simply embraced
the melodic rhythms of their own hearts,
chasing the words whispered to the humid
summer breeze, waiting for no one, never
allowing someone or something hold them down.
No, I thought for once these were the true
artists, the poets, the people who could
change the world with their brilliant minds.
But no, I found that they never existed,
for I had built them up in my mind to be
so much more than they truly were,
more paper thin people in a crumpled town.

And sometimes I have nightmares, vivid
and frightening dreams of becoming
a mirror image of them, those broken and
distraught souls, renounce my dreams
and the warmth in my heart, replacing it with
greed, malice, jealousy, and losing sight
of who I have grown to be so proud of.

I will never become just another translucent
face in this dismal paper thin town.