Matcha By The Ounce

Walking down the pavement, looking at the brick / They painted over murals with a coat of sterile white / The corner grocery store is selling matcha by the ounce / I used to buy my dinners with the quarters in my couch / Standing on the corner where the buses used to wait / Now it is a patio with fancy wooden plates / Window on the second floor, they changed the broken glass / Potted plants on balconies, the luxury of cash / We froze inside December, wrapped in blankets on the floor / Now it costs a thousand extra just to walk inside the door / See the shiny metal where the rusty buzzer sat / Strangers drinking lattes where the local strays would nap / Brick and mortar changing hands / The currency of trend / Where did all the neighbors go? / Where do the families end? / Erasing all the history to build a modern view / The postcode is the same but the geography is new / A hipster on a bicycle is riding past the gate / I pull my jacket collar up and calculate the date / A decade traded out for polished wood and herbal tea / This city keeps evolving, peeling far away from me / Leave the block behind before the nostalgia gets loud / Just another ghost walking under a grey cloud