When Never Came to Call

Where were you when Never came around?

Incinerating stone and decimating every grain of sand.

Comparing labels down at the price club?

Or were you warm and snug in your thick, cushy bed?

⁉️

Did you panic or shrug, unsurprised at the state of the world?

Maybe you contemplated the low melting point of viscoelastic foam.

⁉️

How long did Never take to silence dissent?

For the pixelated images to arrive and

just as quickly dissipate

from your curated sphere of comfort and bliss?

Do wails of resistance reach your lack of sense?

Do the rays leave your wickedly glowing screens

scatter before your bleeding ears and shattered heart

like shards of glass in a hellfire storm?

⁉️

Has the algorithm taken the blame?

Did you subconsciously turn away in the name of protecting

your dopamine-saturated brain?

How could you not?

Liquifying flesh, ragged limb stumps;

the silent ghosts of infants not yet passed from hunger

shrinking when they should be growing.

Life swallowed up by grey clouds of debris

death vomited out into the once-shining sea.

Unthinkable sights no human should see.

⁉️

Would we all slowly slide into a coma of impotence?

Numb from the constant stream of grief, fear, and rage.

Never — seemed so final an unreachable height.

Like the very statement postponed this unthinkable plight

out past forever…Never.

⁉️

Yet, over and over, Never comes searching out

those it thinks the rest can do without.

Like a scavenger in the night while fear of the dark and

Never returning holds the mob of justice back.

Where will you be when Never comes

around for you and your family?

Who will you turn to

when Never took all your neighbors

while you were stalling?

K.B.Silver

This poem was published in the fantastic book Salt in the Wound by Vocal's own River and Celia in Underland. If you didn't grab a copy when it came out, now would be the perfect time to do so. When I wrote this, ICE wasn't roving the streets openly kidnapping Americans. When I wrote this, American Government officials still pretended to be against pedophilia. When I wrote this, Medical professionals got to decide what was wrong with me and what caused it. When I wrote this Never again still seemed possible, but it isn't because it's already happening.