At Any Time of Night or Day

Terrible things are happening outside.

At any time of night and day,

poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes.

The doors splinter like bones.

Children scream into echoing hallways,

their teddy bears falling to the floor

beside shoes that won’t make it to school.

Neighbors peek through blinds,

some praying in silence,

others filming with phones—

and some,

some cheer.

They hoot and holler like drunk wolves,

chests puffed with borrowed power,

forgetting

that fascism eats its own children too.

These are the new Nazis,

wrapped in flags they don’t understand,

too stupid to see

that a modern 1930s Germany

won’t spare them either.

They clap for cages,

kiss boots,

as if cruelty

might one day love them back.

Every person of color

feels the breath of history on their neck.

We are living, again,

through a slow march into tyranny—

but this time, with hashtags

and Amazon Prime.

The red hats whisper like swastikas,

and the ICE trucks rumble

like boxcars in the dark.

“I keep my ideals,”

Anne Frank wrote,

“because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

But even she

was betrayed by silence.

This is 1984 with a prettier font.

This is Brave New World

where soma is a screen.

This is The Handmaid’s Tale

and we’re watching it as fiction,

pretending it’s not instruction.

The rich are afraid.

Not of justice—

but revenge.

They know what they’ve done.

They know

that if we survive,

we will remember.

And once we’re gone—

deported, or dead—

the “whites” who cheered

will be served the same scraps

from a gilded table.

They will learn

too late,

that the boots they licked

still kick downward.

Terrible things are happening outside.

And the worst thing of all

is how normal it’s beginning to feel.