Observation
We gather beneath the monument’s shadow, lips dripping with hymns of unity, yet each heart hoards its own gilded hunger. “For the collective,” we chant, a masquerade of noble echoes—while secretly we claw at the seams of our neighbor’s fortune, envious fingers trembling. There can be no victor but me; should another rise, we’d drag them down, a chorus of smiling saboteurs, into the mire where our true faces writhe. Here, support is a velvet lie draped over a blade—my riches must gleam alone, or not at all.