my name's blurryface

leaves and flowers and trees growing out of abandoned houses and cars, smashing glass windows, invading and reclaiming the spaces humanity took from them

warning scrawled hastily on the sides of buildings in spraypaint or in blood; don’t come here, it’s not safe. turn away, go back. we died here. you will too.

notes and messages scattered across the world, addressed to people who never saw them or never lived to reply to them. rachel, we’re alive. david, don’t look for us. amy, dad got bit, please come home, we need you. kim, i love you. 

people broken into tiny groups. society shattered. they are past the anger, past denial, past trying to fix any of it. now there is only begrudging acceptance, and the knowledge that nothing is ever going to get better. the only thing they can do is survive.

a skeleton lying at the foot of a tree, flowers blooming in its ribcage. a bloodstained note in its front pocket. ‘sorry, mom’. travelers see it and barely spare a thought; such things are commonplace.

roaming packs of dogs and cats still wearing their collars, centuries of domestication breaking down under the need to live and to keep living

families born of blood and sacrifice. trading stories over campfires about who they used to be, who they might have been, what they could have become if none of this ever happened. looks of understanding when someone loses a sister, a brother, a father. it happened to me, too.

abandoned bedrooms combed over for supplies, but the faded posters still hanging on the walls and the useless knickknacks on the shelves tell the stories of the people who lived there years ago

i think there’s something so dangerous in the idea that we can blandly “survive” him. a calming wave that promises - oh, it’s not so bad, and we’ve lived through bad before. you lived through bad before. others did not.

don’t be calm. living, breathing, being alive in spite of this man is the best thing to be. our existence is a menace to him, and the idea that i could be causing him some small amount of discomfort is a small and bitter pleasure of mine. be alive, but fight. the only way out is through. he can guess again if he thinks we’re going to brace ourselves and hope we’re one of the ones who doesn’t become a statistic. there are those who cannot fight that i am protecting. there are those who must remain apart for their own safety. since i have the voice and the ability, i’m here. since i am able, i will be everything he hates and i will be it loudly, i will be it for those who cannot be. 

there are people who will not survive this presidency. there are people who have died as a direct result already. and i want him to feel every drop of blood he is responsible for. we cannot sit and pray we’re one of the survivors. as long as we are surviving, we must make use of our time because - god help me - we might be the next victim. and while everyone around us is placidly buckling down and bearing the load - we’ve already held up so much. and i want him to feel the weight. i want every ghost he gathers to swallow him whole. 

there are those who will not survive. there are those that did not survive. there is always hope, there is always the others who carry our light, there is always our own hands. but we cannot promise that there will be no loss of life. we cannot promise that the america we know will be somehow unchanged on the other side.