I've never dream big:

A steady-paying office job,

A safe, healthy family,

A house in the middle of an empty field.

Maybe a warm dinner awaits when I come home,

And a radio that plays trashy pop songs on a loop as I fall asleep—

To the drawls of my breathing in an empty bedroom,

To the sound of nature slowing down for the night.

There is a shame in holding these dreams:

An implication that I am a waste of space,

Of time,

Of opportunities.

There is a heavy weight of nothing and everything:

An accumulation of lack of drive,

The fear of failure,

The endless repetition of routines.

The wheel of fate that keeps spinning on and on,

And I pass up on all the better things because I do not want more than what I already have.

I don't crave much,

Just small, unextraordinary things.

Simple, naive wishes,

Child-like and simple.

Not ambitious, not grandiose in its complexity.

There is nothing new to be needed.

Nevermind shooting for the stars,

I am content here on the ground

Leading a boring, insignificant life

Of a boring, insignificant person

Made up of boring, insignificant atoms.

It is a life of no clear death.

Or perhaps what I yearn for was not a life

But rather, a drawn-out dying process:

Slowly eroding away,

Reduced and faded into the thin air.

Forgotten.

Underwhelmed, unimpressed, and uninspired.

It matters little.