Shallow Breathing

I can't accept that this is all we want from life. Content to watch our youth decay, a slow march to a grave. We give up our desires, trade them in for security and just enough distractions that we don't bite the hand that feeds:

the cross and the bottle, the warm glow of the TV screen, and those little white pills that put our minds at ease.
I cannot accept a slow death so thinly veiled as life.
We can't get back the years spent staring at a screen or breaking out backs for someone else's dreams, of punching the clock and grinding through the week while the tools of escapism keep us on our knees.

I'm only twenty-two years old and I've already lived too many cubicle days that felt like eight hour shifts with a shovel in hand, digging my own grave.