humanhumanehumanity

Isolation’s effects sit heavy on my chest, generalizing strangers and vilifying friends,

sending me into a depressive state

spiraling

signaling

virtues that never extend past advocacy.

Stagnant social media activism offers the same bitter aftertaste as the injustices it supposedly opposes

and when nothing improves aside from the number of humanitarian hashtags

we bask in our own glory

“I’ve done my part,” we assure ourselves,

while the people leading the charge continue drowning in the systems we were so eager, so convinced to change

just last week.

Each time we look outside

of our individualist capitalist bubble

we recognize that more than just the economy has collapsed.

Still our one concern remains:

ourselves.

Why am I

anxousdepressedpoorlonelyunmotivated

while my neighbors are

sickmurderedpersecutedstrippedofhumanrights.

Why can’t I

gotobarsgetmynailsdonetraveltheworld

while my neighbors are

dyingaloneinhospitalsandinthestreets.

At the will of a pandemic, at the hands of police, at the words of a president who has time and again shown his racism bigotry ignorance ass to the American people.

The fourth of July is a propagated lie

don’t ask me to unite and celebrate the life

of a nation that abides

by whatever rules are convenient at the time.

(And yes that stanza needed to rhyme.)

Because this is important and I think we’ve forgotten

that people are more than their names or their hashtags,

especially when their names become hashtags.

Activism isn’t a TikTok trend

and neither are the countless victims of

police brutality

sex crimes

or covid,

despite what headlines may lead you to believe.

Should you ever decide

to read past the headline

you, too, will realize that this pain is

historic, systemic, the root of everything we know.

These lessons aren’t new,

and, this time,

they aren’t going away

until we learn – for good – that this world

isn’t yoursminehisherstheirs.

It’s ours.