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We didn’t count on the despair. Utopia, they said. Freedom they cried. Equality they demanded. They trusted the revolutionaries, the ones that said we became moral, virtuous, just by simple agreement. A blog post here, a tweet there,and that’s all that would be needed to be an ally, to be part of the revolution.

So we didn’t see it coming. The price that would need to be paid, the tune we would need to dance to, the belongings and safeties we’d be required to relinquish. Money would always come from someone else, right? Those rich people, they could share.

But the rich never share. They just get richer, off the back of good intentions, wrapped up in propaganda and sweet, sweet lies. The genius of this final revolution,the one that took everything, was simply this: they sold the story that only by following could you be good, be virtuous.To dissent was evil, ‘wrongthink’ punishable by expulsion, even death by the end. But death might’ve been better, over all.

So when they came for your home, your belongings, your pride, your achievements, how could your refuse? Only the rich can take to that degree, and only we can give. By the time we realised, all avenues were cut off, and all that was left was degradation and a new form a slavery, but a ‘slavery for all’ this time. Well, everyone except the rich.

But never mind, they left us something. The one thing we never counted on till it was too late to even count. But it’s palpable and it ours.

The despair.

(c) H M Valentina 2020