A Poem Found

For days I have not awoken.
For years I have not been awake.
Dazed, sick, and tortured
I watch hope pass,
Seated peacefully and alone on a subway car.

“Is it bread and water,
or caffeine and nicotine,
that is as essential as breath,
for I cannot recall?”

Step follows step, follows step, as we continue on
Past a man sleeping (dreaming?) on a park bench
Before passing grandiloquent marble staircases
That wind to formal dining rooms,
Full of men in pressed white shirts, loosed at the collar,
Gorging and laughing disregardfully.

“Is that it?”
She questions back.
“Nay!” I cry, “For certainly it cannot be.”