by Karim Sultan
 
 
 

It made sense for only a fraction of a second:

Instead of pictures-as-contemporary-memories, it was more "Was that mommy when she was my age?" Can you even comprehend the time involved in making a person? Its all winners and losers to you, never frightening balcony-edges or subtle carefree moments with people who are neither friends nor lovers which defy petty convention. What of those? And somehow a united front will take them down; and somehow a united front will take them down; and somehow a united front will take them down. When our united front becomes all that we aspire for it to be, what will happen when the subtle-carefree either loses or wins appeal (you tell me), and when the children we have forget that our eyes, too, got watery. Don't expect us to admit it, though. When we see young faces glowing, not with the inner light of vivacity but rather that which is only skin-deep, the radiating cold-warmth of the computer screen, then perhaps it is finally time for me to go to sleep and wake when angels kiss my feet; and abandoned homes are complete with those who need them instead of paper-contracts that tell us that they are somehow occupied, not with the flesh-and-blood creatures who need them to avoid a slow-freeze, but rather a ghost, recognized legally as 'private property'. I'll burn your contracts to make fire for the fates that we all have, to conspire against those who look towards us as a means to an end; we as 'we' are stronger than 'me' and 'me' and 'me' and 'me'. Lay down your swords of privacy, make obsolete the possessive-individuality (so that we as we can be stronger than that me and me). Remember that 'individual' means "a single human being distinct from a group, class, or family". And since I've never met this person in person, I can safely stay away from that one for whom a religion of one is plenty.

Now that we've established the fallacy in 'man' over 'men', raise your fists at them. Make every living breath flame unto which you can defy, even just for a moment, single existences; make every living movement that moment, a scene of proving to them that 'we', united, will never be defeated. If I leave you now with this, will it be enough? Or must I return countless times and have the multitude hear multiple versions of a multiplicity of words. Perhaps the 'we' will return again to 'me' and 'me' when 'they' are defeated and we relax, comfortably, and cede to that which we thought we had defeated.

Watch the horizon carefully for your replacement.