prayer

how many concessions will suffice?
we lay our clipped opinions on the table
placed just so - we gun for appeasement from the top dogs; the meandering judge
who keeps his eye line over our shoulders,
so flatly state his decree,
“good enough.”

it is a ceremony of people hunched forward
hands in repentance for some most grievous fault,
we who are eternally thankful, accept the quiet dignity of compromise,
proudly sacrificing each moment that was only meant to be ours -
would we still say our nightly prayers, if we knew, and not believed?

how long will the barrel churn?
until eight men satiate their ambition?
until eight billion appease their hunger?
until we have no more soft retellings of history,
until we can no longer bear to misremember who we once were; who we could’ve been.

say the words you want to say.
the silence doesn’t have to last.
there’s no mistakes
when there’s nothing left to prove.