Dedication
For those searching for a place where their soul can breathe.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The First Crack – The moment you notice the shift in the place you call home.
Polluted Skies – A metaphor for the toxicity that seeps into the air and life.
Lost Connections – When friendships and relationships crumble.
Dying Blooms – The slow decay of beauty, hope, and dreams.
Neon Cages – Feeling trapped by the artificial promises of the city.
The Sun’s Disguise – A reflection on hope vanishing behind veils of despair.
The Yearning Path – The longing to escape and the courage to step away.
Looking for a New Place – The title poem, a bold declaration of searching for freedom.
A Place to Belong – Finding solace, even if it’s only in dreams or distant horizons.
The First Crack
it starts small a crack in the wall, a little mold creeping into the corners. you ignore it
but then the nights stretch longer, the sirens louder. you see it in the faces of strangers on the subway, and worse, in the mirror.
the place you once called home feels like a pair of shoes a size too small. you try to walk in them anyway, but the blisters keep coming
the first crack isn’t what breaks you it’s what lets you know the breaking has begun.
Polluted Skies
the air here sticks to your lungs thick, gray, like a bad memory you can’t cough up once, the sky was blue. or maybe I just imagined that. now it’s the color of concrete, the kind they pour over dreams to keep them buried. people shuffle through it, heads down, shoulders bent, as if carrying the weight of all that smoke and ash
I tried to look up once, to see the stars, but the city laughed, a dry, bitter sound. what did you expect? it said. beauty? not here. not anymore.
Lost Connections
once, we sat under cheap bar lights, laughing like fools, drunk on nothing but each other’s company.
now your words cut like broken glass. shards of old jokes, turned bitter, sharp.
I see you across the room, but you ’ re a stranger wearing my friend’s face. smiling like you know me, talking like you don’t
this city does that it grinds people down, turns warmth to stone. we all learn to wear masks, even when the air is clear.
I thought we’d make it through but maybe I was just holding onto ghosts.
Dying Blooms
the flowers used to bloom here bright, wild things breaking through cracks in the pavement.
now they droop, petals browned at the edges, stems bent under the weight of a city that forgot how to care
once, I saw a kid pluck a daisy from a roadside patch she smiled like it was the first miracle she’d ever held. I wonder where she is now.
I wonder if she remembers these days, even the soil seems tired, like it’s given up, refusing to grow anything but weeds.
I can’t blame it. even beauty knows when it’s time to leave.
Neon Cages
the lights here never go out.
neon reds, sickly greens, buzzing like flies over a city that won’t sleep, can’t breathe.
they call it life but it’s a lie these streets don’t lead anywhere, just loops of concrete and steel, trapping us like rats in a maze designed for someone else’s amusement.
I see them in the windows, faces lit by glowing screens, chained to lives they didn’t choose.
I thought I could escape it, but the bars are everywhere they follow you home, they glow in your eyes even when you shut them
freedom doesn’t exist here, just brighter cages
The Sun’s Disguise
the Sun used to show up, golden and bold, stretching across the sky like it owned the place
now it’s just a rumor hidden behind curtains of smog and half-hearted mornings.
you look up, but all you see is the ghost of what it was
they say it’s still there, but it feels like a lie, like everything else here: smiles, promises, the "fresh air" they sell in cans at the corner store.
even the shadows don’t bother anymore. what’s the point of running when the light isn’t chasing you?
The Yearning Path
the road out of here isn’t paved with promises it’s cracked, uneven, littered with doubts and the junk we leave behind.
but it pulls me, like a song I don’t quite remember but can’t stop humming each step feels lighter than the last.
I don’t know where it leads, but it’s better than standing still, better than sinking in this city where dreams get caught in the drain and never come back up
the signs are faded, the map is torn, but the ache in my chest tells me there’s something waiting for me.
and I’m done ignoring it
Looking for a New Place
this city once sang to me, soft and sweet now it wheezes like an old man on his last cigarette
the air hangs heavy, not just with smoke, but with all the things we never say you can taste the rot in every breath.
friends don’t smile anymore, they just show their teeth a warning, a blade. and the flowers? they’ve stopped trying, heads bowed low, too tired to bloom
even the Sun has disappeared, hiding behind layers of gray. it’s not that it’s gone it just doesn’t care to shine here anymore.
so I’m leaving I don’t know where, but somewhere with rivers that don’t stink, where the wind smells like rain, and people don’t sharpen their kindness to a point. this place isn’t mine anymore or maybe, it never was
A Place to Belong
I don’t need much just a patch of earth that doesn’t feel like it’s sinking. a place where the sky opens wide and the stars don’t play hide-and-seek.
I want mornings that smell like something fresh, not the sour tang of yesterday’s regrets. I want streets where people walk like they’re going somewhere they actually want to be.
maybe it’s a house with a door that stays open, or a hill where the wind carries more than dust.
maybe it doesn’t exist. but I’ll keep looking, because somewhere out there is a place that doesn’t just hold me it grows me
there’s no grand message here, no sermon to leave you walking straighter just this:
we ’ re all searching, some of us for a place, some for peace, some for a way to breathe without choking on the wreckage of what we ’ ve built.
if you ’ ve read this far, you ’ re one of the stubborn ones the dreamers, the fools, the fighters and maybe, just maybe, we’ll stumble on that better place someday. not perfect, but enough to make the madness worth it.
thanks for sticking around keep looking.
- Harshwardhan Nehra