Same Shadows

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.