Can't speak

The faded sky of twilight as the lingering light captures the muted sunset. The day ends in a grateful whoosh of promised spring. Makes me remember the days of youth, when you stayed out to play til the street lights came on.

Not only we didn't cover our faces, but we could say what we wanted to say. Granted their was no social media but we could explore our thoughts, our ideas, and we had the protected right to do so... We have no more.

I despised winter, even then. Where I live there was always feet of twinkling crisp snow. We would trudge to school with our moon boots on, kicking the white fluff that had yet to be shoveled. The sky clear and bright blue from the clearing of the storm. We hate it in handfulls, played in it, threw it at each other. Now it tastes of chemicals and you can burn it. Turns black and turns to ash. Just another simulation that we've all believed for years. We cannot speak of it and if we do nobody believes us anyway.

We could write stories and not get a return message saying our thoughts go against the rules, and therefore cannot be heard, or printed or seen. Makes you wonder about how easy it is for people to be fooled. I was as well. Always feeling safe tucked away in the ever shifting doldrum of life on the planet. Never questioning where it was taking us.

We started looking down at screens and suddenly the life I love and know, was completely gone. Replaced by endless toxins in the air, rules, and more rules, and less freedom and less time. Food that doesn't taste like food. Meat that is grown and not raised. Fake food, poisoned air and water, lies told believed and now, we cannot speak.

We throw our trash upon the earth like it is our right. When I was young you picked it up and put it in the trash. You ran through parks of green lush grass, and breathed the clean bright air that was free for all to breathe. Now we cannot speak. We cannot make our own choices. Everyone thinks it is better. Safer. I am reminded of the movie Wall E. I hated it as much as I loved it. Watching it for the first time it almost killed me that Wall E had been left alone. I realized he was a robot, but it still broke my heart. Then you find the humans, still staring at their screens. Taking everything that's told them no matter how wrong it seemed to be.

Like robots in their floating chairs, too blind to see. No relationships, no love, no kindness to be found. Just in a world of floating nothing. No freedom and unable to speak.

That's the direction we are all heading if we don't look up and say No. Break the threads that hold it all together and find the strength to stand up on our own. I miss the days that used to be. The days of seasons, fresh air, choices, and rights. I miss celebrations, and making friends, and feeling like life was forever.

I miss not working my life away to come home to do it again. I miss having nothing to show for the long hours, away. I miss food tasting like what it's supposed to and snow melting next to heat. I miss thinking that all was good, that we had rights protecting us from bodily harm. I miss knowing that our anscestors had done what they could to set up laws and rules that us be ourselves in this the land of the free.

Instead we bent our heads and buried ourselves in the sand and now we are so afraid of taking care of each other and ourselves that we live in fear of the ones who actually work for us. We let them take our money, let them work us like slaves. We let them tell us we hate each other and don't disappoint.

The screens that tell us what is right and what is wrong is all we know. Somewhere along the way, they said they couldn't lie. We believed. Now half of us know that the truth is all a lie and the screens take highest bidder and tell us they cannot lie.

They call it all conspiracy, and lead us into dark. They use us til we see the lie and think it's what should be. The ones that see like crystal balls into the future try to pull the others out, try to speak, they shout but nothing comes out. We are muffled by the invisable threads that keep us standing stll. We cannot speak.

What does each new day hold in store for us, and how do we wake us up to the truth. It all ends now, we only have to say no and put the screens away refusing to continue on as we do.

We just take off the masks and demand clean fresh air, take each others hand and together stand up tall, walk forward and say no. If nobody complies there isn't anything we can't do. We all have the potential to be love, to be strong, to move forward to the greatest life we've ever known. Together we can rise. Together we can build. Together we can be what each and every one of us have always longed to be. Free.