Originally printed as part of an installation, this is best read next to bookended pictures: one of a nude woman, unfurling from above and one of a 160cmish figure in a hoodie and an oversize tee, leaning against any vertical surface they can find.
If the second image doesn’t exist for you, be the change you wish to see in the world.
Change isn’t quiet, she told me. It’s proclaimed on each street corner, it’s in every home where a frowning blonde woman behind the newsdesk calls it moral decay but she uses softer words. We are afraid of words, because words lead to actions, and every action that you take against this dystopic fucking nightmare – every fence cut, every door barred, every hand reaching for another’s, out in this storm – every real thing you do to force them out of our lives and back into their own.
You don’t find safety there. But if you’re really looking, you didn’t find safety here either. You’ve got to be ready and you’ve got to be sure of the choices you’re going to make now.
She fixes my collar and the corners of her mouth twitch. It’s all your choice.
You know they called me complicit once.
Aren’t you?
Damn. Not like that.
Like what?
I don’t know.
She held on to my wrist. It’s not like that, exactly. There’s no such thing as neutral any more. There never really has been. I don’t know what you were told. There’s always a cost.
If you’re not making these choices, someone else is doing that for you. If you don’t take your own agency into your own hands, what is it being used for? Who is it being used against?
That’s not fair, I said.
This isn’t fair.
Change isn’t fair, she told me. It’s individual, in the same way that a storm is a single breath a hundred thousand times over. Change leaves people out just the same as a downpour, or a fire. That’s not intentional, but if you pay no mind it happens just the same. It’s a new story, built on the ashes of the old. Forgetting is both a sign and a tool of something bigger, something driven by people much smaller than both of us. I think it’s a responsibility not to forget. I think it’s yours.
The way you look at anyone, that is powerful. She chucks my chin, unsmiling. That’s why they teach you to cast it down. They know they are nothing without you. We are nothing alone.
Not one.
Our eyes meet again, not searching. I saw it then.
You are a force of nature.
You are holy, I replied.
Aren’t we, though?
I said, You know we’ll never make it. Not like this. Are you comfortable with that? I’m not.
Her mouth twitches again.
And she told me, We don’t have to be. We don’t even have to accept it. Just know that it will happen, and when it does, they will see you. You will have to be ready to look through them like I know you can. Of all the things you’ll forget, let go of everything but this.
I did let go of everything else, everything but this:
Change isn’t quiet.
It’s proclaimed on each street corner, it’s in every home where a different frowning blonde woman behind the same newsdesk calls it moral decay but she uses softer words. They are afraid of words, because words lead to actions, and every action that you take against this dystopic nightmare – every fence cut, every door barred, every hand reaching for another’s, out in this storm – every real thing you do forces them out of our lives and back into their own.
And you have a choice now. You have got to be ready and you’ve got to be sure of the choices you’re going to make now.
But know this. If you’re really looking, there’s no safety to be found here.
But there is safety to be made. There is change, the storm a single breath a hundred thousand times over, the downpour, the fire. It’s a a new story, built on the ashes of the old, it’s a force of nature, it’s you. You are divine, rage and rebirth, and it’s true that you’re nothing on your own. If you must know anything, know then that you are not on your own, not in any sense. There are many more, so many more like you, but not you.
There are words, the words that lead to actions that bring hands, bodies, thoughts, words, and that’s how it goes.
It’s a call that you’ll hear, but not like that. It’s a lightning strike, and pay it mind because we will burn and regrow.