DC

I never thought I'd write this, but for tonight, I've grown weary of my beloved city. I liked it better when, like a new relationship, I wasn't familiar with all the trappings. At one point, the sirens served as background music, as evidence of the bustle of the streets that I loved so much, of the overflowing market, the drunken intern with a fist he couldn't hold back, the overzealous group with a purpose who came here thinking their voices would be heard. But the flashing lights mean none of this. As the months fly, you realize that the white cars are fighting traffic to make it to a block too close to home, one on which a man is lying still next to unfamiliar garbage cans. You learn that it isn't safe - it never really was - to walk the perimeter of the park. Unaccompanied trips to the corner store for a pre-10 pm bottle of Noir become nonexistent. It's no wonder that the chirp of crickets and the sounds of silence and the grass growing don't seem so stifling. Maybe it's just tonight.