In the Cage

It is often difficult to discern just how loud traffic is at night. Drivers zoom in their stratified lines, and pedestrians stomp their steel-toed boots from block to block. From afar it doesn't seem like anybody is looking at anything - as if they're all minding their own business. I know better. I know better then to believe they don't have eyes on the back of their heads, or under the soles of their feet, or over the lenses of their cameras. They are always watching, day in and day out, waiting to see whether I have met their visual quota for the month. It's not like I can escape those eyes either, as I sit like a mural under the sky, blocking the light of the stars from reaching the concrete that holds me. The city lights shine too bright, and the smog in the sky is barely enough to blanket my bare body from prying eyes below.

I let them stare, but I curse every turning head. A whole city of people look up to me, look up to my nude figure in the hopes that it looks as good as it did yesterday. A whole city of people with better things to do is occupied with panning my skin for pockmarks or blemishes. A whole slew of office windows are kept warm by the cheeks of nosy watchers whom, even at work, can't keep themselves from glaring at me. I feel every glance like the prick of a needle, and to that end I may as well be lying on a bed of barbed wire. This bustling civilization is so concerned with how I fare, or if I'm fair enough. It seems that every day what makes me beautiful diminishes, and is instead replaced with a gnawing sense of guilt. I can't keep up with myself just as the roads of this town can't keep up with its cars. Every day the bar rises. Every day I pull my self further inward, that I may appear curvy and clean. Every day I lay on my side for the city to see, for the world to see - for all to witness.

I let my hair grow so that I may cover my shame - cover the tears that dry along my tired dimples. The onlookers remain unaware, less concerned with the expression of my emotions, and more concerned with the language of my body. Their busy days are always scheduled with just enough free time to ogle at me - just enough time to pass silent judgement. It seems silly for me to be judged by a city so small, when I am so massive and mighty that I shade the metropolis beneath me. Yet, I realize that as I grow larger, I am only becoming more vulnerable, more visible to those hundred thousand pairs of baubles, dangling from one of their sockets to another. Their gaze hungrily pierces my flesh, and I am impaled upon the surface of the Earth, forever imprisoned by a most minuscule mankind. 

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