Crowd

The crowd seeps past me.
Flashes of color, hot, flashy, golden, and pained.
I stand there in my underwear, polka-dotted, ripped in the seam, slightly too big.
The crowd moves faster, the edges blur, and something bumps my shoulder.
I am forced to the ground, brought to my knee.
The ground is muddy, trampled, hard packed, solid and heated.
I feel the gravity of the Earth, pulling me closer to the ground. Almost as if it wants to swallow me whole. But I push my head up, crooked neck to stare longingly at the sky, and I see.
Finally see the people's faces as they are yanked pasted. Theirs faces a torrent of different emotions, fear, confusion, joy, anger, hate, ecstasy, guilt, and all of them delicious, but strained. As if people do not even realize that they make these faces. I notice that their bodies are changing as they rush by. Blood gushed from wounds and heal before my eyes. Little slices, and I see that those slices are being made by words. Snipets of conversation, cutting into the very flesh, some deeper than others. The cloud of words circle people as a bee to it's hive, some coming from others while some coming from within. And these words change these people's expressions. Manipulate their life. Words like, SHOULD, RIGHT, WRONG, DIFFERENT, CHANGE, and for each person those words mean something different but they all look the same. Should live my life the right way. If I am wrong I will be punished and those who are different from me are wrong. Why would I rise up and stand for those who are different if they are wrong? Things are never going to change.
And this why I/people can watch the news all over the world and watch people die over my/their breakfast in the morning, why I/we go to bed each night and feel no pain.
Because we believe we are I's and not WE's-what hurts one, hurts all.