Centennial in Colorado

I am Colorado, and I am not what you think. I am not the Rockies dramatic, snow-capped majesty, nor the golden slopes of the Front Range where people come to die of sunstroke. I am Centennial, the unassuming, beige-skin suburb where the real drama happens in the parking lots and on the third floor of the strip mall. My skyline is not a mountain, but a row of mid-rise office blocks, all identical in their beige indifference, standing like bored interns in a corporate meeting. The sky? Oh, the sky is still my canvas a vast, unbroken expanse of cerulean, stretching so wide it makes your soul feel like a forgotten parking ticket. The trees? They are my sparse, half-dead sentinels, evergreen in name only, clinging to the earth like stubborn interns who never got promoted. I have mountains, yes but they are distant, blurred by the heat and the smog of ambition. They are not my children. They are the backdrop to my slow, suburban decay. I am not a place of adventure or awe. I am the place where the adventure is your 3:15 PM Zoom call from the Starbucks drive-thru, the place where the awe is the skys perfect, unblemished blue a blue so vast it mocks the smallness of your existence. I am not the wild west. I am the beige west, where your coffee is lukewarm, your Wi-Fi is slow, and your soul is a little bit smaller than the parking lot that just got a new sign. I am Centennial, and I am not sorry. I am not the land of the free. I am the land of the slightly-too-quiet. I am the land where your dreams are parked, and your heart is a little bit too small for the sky. I am the land of the beige. And I am not sorry.

Comments