Every generation believes it is the first:
first to hold heartbreak
like a bird gasping for air,
first to curse the sky\'s stubborn silence,
to feel love as revolution,
to call fear by a new name
and think no one has spoken it before.
Yesterday, they wore different costumes.
Different wars, different walls,
different lovers’ tiffs sung in alleys.
But their voices crackled the same
when their hearts split open
and rewrote the songs of their time.
Listen closely—those echoes belong to all of us.
We think the past is far away,
dust settled on strange histories.
But every face in an old photograph
looks startled to be remembered,
as if it knew we’d forget
that we are made of the same
patterns stretched across the same stars.
Perhaps the only new thing
is the arrogance of believing
we’ve cornered the market
on pain, on joy, on discovery.
But I have seen children
draw the same sun,
bright and perfect, eternally burning.