Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

Suburbia

Illustrated by Billy Mann Velicaria

The manicured evergreen lawns have razor sharp edges,

Don’t get too close or you’ll get pricked and join the parade.

I know because the streets have seen me.

They resent the salt water I litter from my eyes on their pavements,

I am the rain on their parade.

The white houses aren’t holy,

But they surely all look elated in hell.

I know because I see their lives go by,

Battle scars and growing pains revert back to steady morning commute and matrimony,

Your integrity is despondent, you’re fated to join the parade.

The playgrounds are haunted,

By the ghosts of mourned ambition.

The offsprings of remorse’s fools surely don’t see it, though.

I know because am their trespasser, their little laughing stock,

But I see them, and I see the road ahead, and I see how unnecessarily high they hold their heads,

So high that they don’t even realize they proudly march in the parade.

Even the birches are sickly and decaying,

They’re one with me.

I know because I am the sound of wind in their leaves,

The leaves that cannot twirl freely in autumn air before falling to the ground,

They refrain from changing colours for the sake of not being a burden,

They’ll solely be polluting the parade.

So I retreat to the vacant back alley ravines,

As a mere attempt to seek glory in monotony.

Here, I see the truth through the gaps of the picket fences,

The truth that stabbed my insides violently,

But it won’t be enough to kill me, right?

Oh, please, please, please don’t let me die here,

Just let me bleed enough to leave my mark and be omitted from the parade.