The Slow March
CW: suicide reference, death, collapse
The smell of old blood hangs sick and sticky in the air, a final warning we struggle to ignore. How else could we go on, continue to march forward, if we allow ourselves to be distracted by the screams? There is death at the end, and death to those who can't keep going.
Look away from the blood on the walls. Look away from the bloodstains beside you. Shuffle forward, eyes down, focus on one step at a time.
If only you would boost this post, sign this petition, fund our mission, remember your canvas bag, stop using plastic straws, bring your own water bottle, participate in the die-in, occupy the highway, execute your boss, riot, carry out guerilla warfare against the petroleum industry…
Creep through a window just after it closes, always do to little too late. By the time we grow anger to action it will only be a transmutation of grief over the fact that there is nothing left to save.
But I am an animal who fights, who bites. I'll chew off my leg and drag my entails, to not die on my knees in whimpering silence. But perhaps I can enjoy the comfort of my cage for a moment longer. Perhaps I can sedate myself enough to ignore the screams. With the right medication, perhaps I can stop the dreams. The hope… That haunts me more than the certainty of death… What medicine can kill the knowledge of something better?
Oh hope! There is that kernel of abiding pain, of burning rage, ever exploding from containment, but with nowhere to go.
I don't want to die! We don't have to die! I scream into a void. A chorus of echos without action. A hymn for our funeral that no one will attend. An epitaph, well written, for no one to read.
35 people like the impotent thrashing against the tightening chains pulling us into the crushing depth.
I feel heard.
Would that I could cry would it quench this fire? Or feed it? Or drain me dry a shriveled husk carried as an ember on the murder wind…
Never before has a mass suicide been so well organized. Never before has an extinction been so carefully orchestrated. One foot at a time, keep moving forward, in the slow march towards death.