Cardboard Combustion

It's like walking through an empty door to a barren reflecting pool.  No one is around.  Only the blank space between you and your reflection will hear you scream, but you only shout inside yourself.  Barely a day ago you were surrounded, though your surroundings felt foreign.  You place markers on the side of the mountain with hopes of making it back up again some day, but no one responds, or if they do, their colors quickly fade again into the background.

How do you create from nothing?  How do you find something where there was nothing to start?  Where is the life in a ghost?  Who will respond?  Who will be the one I miss who misses me?  Yes, alone time is good, but this continued isolation cannot be healthy for anyone.  Swipe right.  Swipe left.  What does it matter?  No one will respond anyway.

All of these cardboard cutouts won't cut it.  There is something out there.  There has to be.  If not, then I too am fading into the background.  People press their faces into smiling masks, holding onto fragile hope that happiness will save them.  They hope in flashy lights and smoke machines, and when the man behind the curtain accidentally shows his face they hide their eyes.  I'm not falling for it.  But it's a lonely life living in the knowledge of the truth.  It's a lonely life living beyond forced ignorance.

Preaching transparency and powerlessness to the masses.  Beating down the flock with a cursed compliment.  A subtle hint of their true worship as he nudges a ball to the side.

They say I am bold, but I just cannot stand to be lied to.  I will not fall for your lies like your fallen ones.  Does the wool make you itch?  Does it irritate your wounds like the ones you pour salt on every day?  I cannot lay down and let the smooth lies slide into my like syrup.  A silk robe may be precious, but it will not hide your fangs.

No one can know any of this and so it shall go onto the public forum.  Remember the ancient ones and their laws?  Maybe they aren't all tombs and temples.  Maybe that's just what we see today.  Think of the materials we use today, how many of them would last millennia aside from the stones and the structures they hold.  The rich and the elites know this and so they build their towers not just high, but strong.  They build their stories (their versions of history) deep into the zeitgeist so they can cement their place in history.  They leave us behind but feed us bread and entertain us with circuses so we won't notice them as they slip out the back door.

Their distraction is our destruction.  Well, we've noticed.  We may be late to the game, but cheaters never win and winners never cheat.  Prepare for the end of your reign.  Even sturdy cardboard falls.