There’s a certain horror to being right,
to telling all those around you of
what will come to pass, and
watching them shake their heads.
With a laugh, they’ll tell you,
“Don’t worry, it won't happen like that.”
With a sigh, they’ll say,
“You don’t know that for certain.”
With a cry, they’ll ask,
“Why do you have to look for the worst in things?”
And it’s not that you want to see the worst in things,
it’s that you see reality for what it is
and like Cassandra
you call out the future, now,
and watch as no one listens.
When you say that you can’t.
When you say that you won’t.
When what you say is brushed past,
for the sake of nothing more than
protocol put in place to hurt.
“You don’t need that.”
“No one needs that.”
“Stop asking for it.”
When metal fails a pressure test
there is no picking up the pieces.
There is simply only going back to
the drawing board and starting anew.
We don’t have that luxury.
When we shatter, our pieces skid
and tumble, and we have to pick
every little bit up off the floor, lest
we look like an eyesore to those
who watch us break with no
sympathy behind the eyes only
annoyance they must wait for us
to finish putting ourselves back
together once more so they can
feign ignorance to our weakness.
But they are not ignorant because
we screamed from the top of the
walls and they ignored our pleas.
They do not care.
They do not see us.
They do not hear us for all the cotton
stuffed into their ears, that they put there.
Because as the city that is us burns
just as we foresaw, they will call it
a victory.
They will step over our burnt, mangled corpses,
and call it victory.
For they did not hear us, and they certainly won’t start
listening now,
as they plead ignorance despite holding the matches
that set us ablaze.