Like the clumsy clingy kisses of an ardent amateur lover, I could feel the grotesque stickiness of the summer night fumbling over my exposed limbs. In my car, windows down, my fingers felt the steering wheel going gummy. My poor dilapidated beast of transport’s AC couldn’t even bother to sputter out lukewarm air.

And what the hell was that smell?

Having lost the space to roam in the soft cushiony crevices of my brain, thoughts were crashing haphazardly into the walls of my skull, headache soon to arrive. I almost ran through the red.

Stopped, engine idling, a small horde of hipsters crossed the street. Young, laughing, debating music, art and authors. Attired in mock jadedness and cynicism, the hope of possibility could not be shrouded by such a farce. Their stroll was far too strident, cheeks too rosy, smiles too genuine.

And it occurred to me, I knew this because I envied them. I was jealous of the world being their cliched oyster. Pensive, sweaty and sad, I accepted one of the first of many truths to come. I had lost touch with who I was. Lost sight of who I had wanted to be.

Green means Go.

Tired foot off the brake, I continued my sojourn home. Broke, poor, lonely, lost – I randomly eyed my neighborhood. The place I was conceived and born into. The same place I fled the moment I had the chance. The one and only place to which I returned when nowhere else would have me.

Back to square one. So it would seem.