[ IP ] Oppressed

Oh to touch that sleek, grey steel. To run a hand across it and feel its perfect smoothness. To step inside those doors carefree and never leave. 
 
 They do n't even look at it. They just walk down the street in their black clothes with their black umbrellas - a daily funeral procession from one drab brick cube to the next. Some of them carry briefcases, held as if to reassure themselves of some great importance. Some walk in silent pairs between those squat buildings, brown and red and grey in endless rows down rainslick streets. 
 
 They say that the gardens inside those silver walls are filled with trees so tall, their trunks so wide, that ten men could not fell one in a week, and along each gnarled branch, dangling within an embarassment of greenery to make a noble redwood mad with jealousy and a petulant spruce bristle with envy, is a thousand thousand fruits with juice that tastes like a sun-dappled pond and flesh that parts like a clear, rushing brook. 
 
 We will never taste that fruit. But how can they just look away? How can they pretend it is n't just within reach, just past those polished walls? How do they get up each morning and walk, eyes straight ahead, to another lifeless day of selling shoes or filing paper or serving each other coffee? How can they bear it? 
 
 Is this why they do not speak? Is this why they wear black and carry their black umbrellas? Is this the look of a people in mourning?
