I’m walking down a grey street.
It’s wet.
Like after a storm.
The pavement, the sidewalk saturated.
A small stream flows down the street next to me.
It’s foggy, misty.
Difficult for me to see.
I catch a glimpse of a silhouette within the gloom.
It’s a woman.
Her hands in her pocket.
Her gaze at her feet.
As I get closer, I see it’s me.
Feeling the weight of the clouds around me.
Damp from the mist and fog.
As if the clouds are physically resting on my shoulders.
I hear angry voices behind me,
at the same time she does.
Claims of theft and distrust.
I stare in front of me,
Wondering if my vision is a reflection of sorts.
If, like the running stream next to me, I have reached another form of water.
If I have become it.
Become the mist that settles around me.
Become the fog and losing the clarity of vision.
A vision out, a vision in
The roars continue in the distance.
Calling us to join the aggression.
Prodding to continue to fight.
I don’t want to go.
Neither does the girl who stands before me.
Like the rain cleansing the road
I'm aching to start anew
I want to be rinsed of the voices
And doubt that carry in the breeze.
Feeling the pull backward and my yearn to gaze forward
Fearing the outcome I dread so deeply.
I find myself wanting to be lost among the fog.
Back into the mist.
I want to keep flowing down the street.
Like a river
Touchable but unable to grasp.
I want to become the mist.
Transform into tiny particles of moisture
Evaporating back into the sky
As I stare at my own reflection,
at myself,
I don't want to look behind me.
I want to remain masked, covered.
I want to hide from the bull shit
The rhetoric,
The lies
I want the truth to be told.
The conspiracies to stop
And unity to return.
I want the people to speak,
The votes to count,
The threats on democracy to halt
I want to mend.
Yet, it all seems so foggy.
So lost among the mist.
So dampened and weighed down.
So heavy from strain and tension
Unrecognizable to how it once looked
When the weather was clear.
When the fresh breeze blew the clouds away
And the brightness of the sun was celebrated.
It feels like another world
A shifting atmosphere
A change of season
I feel a chill that sends goosebumps down my neck
As I watch my reflection shiver.
The world gets darker
My reflection more and more out of focus.
I want to touch the water,
Watch how easily it distorts from the slightest ripple.
Haunted by how fragile it all is.
A part of me wants to cling on.
To grasp a reflection that will only slip through my fingertips.
Now, just a facade of what was.
But no longer is.
I hope I’m wrong
As I stand here in the darkness
That feels like it has swallowed me whole.
As the world around me grows more dim.
I hope my predictions are wrong.
I repeat to the reflection
The potential doom I see past her,
In the reflection
In the horizon
Of the reality brewing behind me
As the chanting continues in the distance.
Feeling the weight of my fear.
The weight of the weather.
The air, the atmosphere around me.
I hope the sun shines once again and
Things become united as I stand.
Here in the haze.
In the mist.
As my reflection disappears
Back within the fog

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