For Humanity

 

A cage is a cage is a cage.

It doesn’t matter that they put colors and cute things and soft lights and children’s music. Nothing could mask the fact that they could not get out, that there was always someone watching, that there was no place to hide.

An experiment, they said. For humanity.

As if that made confiscating liberty a palatable thing. The withholding of sunlight. The absence of the outdoors.

They hadn’t given permission to rob their present as justification for the planning of others’ future.

But they were orphans. Disposable cogs in the wheels of interstellar travel hopes.

 

 

 

 

 

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Lisa Fox

 

Indispensable

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(Photo: Catt Liu on Unsplash)

 

She checked the items off the list.

One by one by one by one.

She’d learned to not look too far down. Better to not confront endlessness. To not have to face it that today, too, there will not be a moment when the job is done. When she is free.

Only another task.

Another chore.

Mistress claimed she was “indispensable.”

Praise or curse for why she could not get a few days off to see her ailing mother. To rest. To marry.

“We’re your family,” Mistress had said. “We need you. It is a requisite you stay.”

 

 

 

 

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Challenge: Requisite in 98 words

 

Turning Up

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(Photo: Brett Jordan on Unsplash)

 

There had to be a way

To be heard,

Without becoming

What they fought

Against.

They refused to condone

Violence,

Hate,

Or putting others down

To make a point.

Instead,

They turned up

A crescendo

Of truths.

 

 

 

 

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Crescendo in 37 words

 

Not You. Not Here.

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Photo: Markus Spiske on Unsplash

 

You are not welcome.

Here.

Or anyplace that we hold

Dear.

You are unwelcome

Here.

Because you lack

The right color

Or veneer

Or gender

Or conviction,

And because you have far too much

Proclivity toward

Fear.

You are not welcome.

Here.

Though if you come,

Subservient,

Kowtowing

To us

Year by lingering

Year,

We might allow you

To remain

As long as you

Humbly

Adhere,

To our need to aggrandize

Our wrongs,

And as long as you

Declare you will

Never rise

Above a state that

Holds us as

Premier.

 

 

Note: Dedicated to all who fight ingrained injustice, racism, hate, brutality, and the historical realities of too many who bolster themselves by believing they are somehow ‘premier.’ For the record, there is nothing ‘supreme’ about anyone who claims ‘supremacy.’ There never was.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Unwelcome in 91 words

 

 

A Slowly Fraying Memory

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Photo: Free-to-use-sounds, on Unsplash

 

 

From the hollows of despair, they fled.

The shirts on their backs and the children

In their arms, all they could manage to

Take.

Even the abysmal shelters they had recently

Been made to call

Home,

No longer gave any protection or

A chance at repair or

Reform.

They left, dodging death and finding

Further fright to

Flee,

And in their hearts they held on

Tightly

To the slowly fraying

Memory,

Of days when life was softer

And beds were warm,

And babies slept

Well kept

Safe from war and hate and

Harm.

 

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Abysmal in 93 words

Note: Dedicated to all displaced, terrorized, pressed, oppressed, persecuted persons everywhere, and to the many millions who had, throughout history and in recent memory and in today’s times, been forced to further risk their lives by leaving what had once been home and safety behind, for the unknown.

 

Evidently

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Photo: neonbrand on upsplash

 

Evidently,

There are those who think the will of men should rule over the will of women.

Evidently,

There are those who’d see a rapist as less deserving of punishment than the one who stopped the ongoing impact of that rape.

Evidently,

There are many who claim that their own interpretation of God should be forced onto all others, regardless.

Evidently,

There are those who do not see how that endangers the very premise of religious freedom, and with it, their own access to choice.

Evidently,

There are those who hark for days when girls and women were a property that men could do whatever they desired with, regardless of whether girls and women had agreed.

Evidently,

There are those who push their personal beliefs as science, while ignoring and denying facts that do not fit the narrative they’d allow as acceptable to perceive.

Evidently,

There are those who’d abandon, ignore, punish, and vilify already living children while pretending to cherish those who aren’t yet born.

Evidently,

There are those who value power over choice and silencing over voice.

Evidently,

There are those who’d put people to death even as they claim all life is precious.

Evidently,

There are still many who do not see and many who refuse to even try.

And so … evidently,

There’s much still needed to be done in this time of religious extremism in its push to diminish rights, undo progress, and force radicalization.

Much to do:

To keep theocracy from overtaking true religious and personal freedom;

To liberate distortions of what some claim is pro-life but is in fact just anti-choice;

To help the lost see that support of life respects and encompasses the living and does not, selectively, ‘defend’ only the unborn;

To dispel outdated views of women as unable or unworthy of autonomy over their own bodies, health, and futures;

To protect the lives of women and girls from the intrusion, disrespect, disregard, and dismissal of value, that criminalizing of choice does.

Because …

Evidently,

There is much still needong to be done.

To ensure choice is protected

So lives, too, can.

 

 

 

For Linda’s SoCS prompt: Adverb