The Opposite of Fear

Dark.
Dangerous.
A Fearful Space.
You are abused
from without
by the ones more fearful than you.

And so you leap,
Icarus to the sun,
more willing to burn
than disappear in the dark.

About this poem‘

Here is the truth. Our earliest forefathers did not mean all when they wrote “all” in the earliest documents of our country. Nearly all had slaves and those that did not accepted it.

But here is the other truth. The promise of our country has been the ever growing principle that all does indeed mean all. Step by painful step. Misstep by misstep, as a nation we slowly came to a place and principle that all means all.

And struggle it has been, but for all the struggle, the trajectory, the driving idea behind the promise of America has been a constant movement towards equality. Women. Races. Sexual. Equality.

And if some have to fight for it? Afterwards we are grateful. And if some of us choose to fight for it in a part of the world where that belief is not believed, not really? Afterwards we are always grateful.

But that decision to stand? To fight? To protest? To risk the ire of family and friends to say simply “Oppression is real and oppression is wrong” is a powerful stance. One that has a cost. Sometimes great. I weep at it sometimes.

But in the end, we are always grateful. We may burn on the way to the sun, but we always crave the light.