We don't need you

Scattered thoughts ahead of "Independence" day

Consider this a breakup. We realized we are stronger without you. Without you, we have love and hope. Without you, we are able to move forward instead of retreating to the past. Without you, we can build something new, beautiful, resilient.

You've abused us, discarded us like the trash you've let build up in landfills, like the entire nations you've trampled to get here.

Here. Now.

Here now is a wasteland permeated with noxious fumes and starving bodies reaching for whatever will heal the hurt you've drilled into them.

In your hands we see guns, bills, and needles. In ours, we see nothing. We grasp at air that is barely breathable. We grasp at one more day alive while you grope money.

But, together, we can hold onto each other. Hands gripping hands, gripping arms, shoulders, elbows, wrapped around waists. Holding each other up - we are props to you, pawns, but here we are invincible. A queen who can move about the board to sweep up pieces. Checkmate.

Never have we been so capable with you at the helm. Never have we felt safe or warm save for in the embrace of our neighbors. You're something carved of cheap stone, the kind of concrete used to patch sidewalks in the neighborhoods you pretend don't exist.

That cheap stone, though, is brittle and we have time to chip away at it. There are enough of us where, even in our scramble to go about our day-to-day lives, that shards of you will build up around us in a pile.

We will blow you away like dust.

And suddenly you will be nothing but particles on the wind.

So yes. We don't need you. But you need us, because without us, you are shriveled and powerless. Flaccid. Every day you whittle away at our rights is one step closer to your impotence. Every day our bodies become your battlefield is a march towards your defeat. Every gunshot, every needless death, every law, every time you so much as overlook our needs... it is your loss to feel. Not ours. Because, unlike you, we are not alone.