Misimagination

Rolling hills that wear clouds as hats. Green, white, blue.

The world is collapsing outside, and I hear the shrieks and the sirens. TV pundits say they saw it coming. Internet prophets claim they warned us a decade ago. Politicians promise that this is business as usual. The rest of us are small in the grand scheme, and everything tells us that. We are a tertiary thought, and that teaches us something that is encoded in our DNA; you are not very important.

I wonder how that harms us. How it shapes our decision making, when we go to the grocery store. When we line up in traffic to get gas. When we decide to book a trip across the sea. There’s an inherent inferiority that shames us. It cripples us. It’s unspoken, yes, unsaid, but so fucking clear in our minds. We are not relevant to the conversation, and you’re very good at reminding us.

Being ignored determinably is, in essence, not being ignored at all. If someone chooses to skip over you, you rest within their consciousness. Choices were made with you in mind. If you are, however, not considered at all? Jesus Christ, is there a more humiliating relationship within humankind? You are being told, without a word, that your existence does not even warrant the most minor level of consideration.

Above our heads, however, are the multitudes of conversation that will, inevitably, have a factor on our lives.

Your conversations don’t escape us. Your ignorance does not equal ours. Your lack of recognition, unfortunately, does not equate to ours. It instead reminds us that we are miniscule, nearly non-existent within your context. Your deliberations ring just as magnificent to us as they do to you.

It is a tragedy, then, that we find ourselves less capable of sustaining a blow that comes from these deliberations.

Two men are fighting. Bloody fists and swollen lips. Grunts and profanities.

A right hook misses, and collides with an onlooking child. Unfortunately stationed, I suppose.

No one will cry. No one will observe. An expected byproduct of these necessary fights.