The earth shrugs, and a fault line splits a city in two.
A rock, smooth from centuries of wind and rain, decides today is the day it falls, crushing a man who never missed Sunday mass.
A wildfire starts in the bones of a dead tree, the wind carrying its laughter across acres of homes and history.
Somewhere in the ocean, something ancient rolls over in its sleep, and the tides rise just enough to erase a coastline.
No explanation. No reason. Just the universe twitching in its sleep.
And then there are the other things. The ones written in history books with footnotes that lead nowhere.
The bodies that vanish.
The wars that start because someone blinked at the wrong time.
The lone gunman that wasn’t so alone.
The flag that was still there, an anti-gravity, star bangled banner still waving.
The numbers that don’t add up, the footage that disappears, the coincidences that stack too neatly to be random but too scattered to be anything else.
We shake our fists at the sky, but the sky never bothers to look down.
And then there’s this—the real question, the only one that matters to me.
Jack.
Why Jack?
Not the dealer, not the smug piece of shit pushing poison for profit.
Not the ones who make money off of death while dressed in white coats.
Not the fucking grinning death merchants in boardrooms, approving a new batch of slow, quiet execution.
But Jack?
Why him? Why that night?
Why that second, that breath, that choice?
The tectonic plates shift and ask questions but they don’t answer.
The fire roars, but it doesn’t explain.
The rock doesn’t whisper a reason as it falls.
I wake up every day, expecting the answer to be written on the ceiling, in the cracks in the paint, in the coffee, in the way the wind moves the leaves.
Anything.
I don’t even need it to be the full answer. Just a hint.
But all I get is silence.
And silence is the loudest fucking thing in the world.
But, somehow today I am temporarily at peace, it may not be the answer, but fuck, at least it’s not another question.
Most people will die with their bodies in damn good shape. Neatly kept, clean, like they were waiting for the mortician all along. A few crow’s feet, maybe a little sag around the chin, but overall—good enough for the open casket.
The funeral director will nod, “Looks just like them,” they’ll say. As if that’s some kind of fucking achievement.
But then there’s us— The ones who didn’t treat life like a goddamn waiting room. We come in with screws in our bones, plates in our heads, scars running across our skin like crude roadmaps. We come in with cigarette burns, busted knuckles, wrinkles earned in back alleys, in bars, in love, in wars in octagon of life (physical, emotional, financial—pick your poison).
Our hands don’t look soft because they weren’t. Our ribs might have been cracked, our teeth chipped, and our hearts— well, our hearts certainly don’t come in mint condition.
No embalmer can fix what life did to us. No makeup can paint over the shit we’ve been through. They might try to sew up the damage, smooth out the years, but some things don’t hide.
And maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s better to arrive at the end, not looking like a goddamn mannequin, but like someone who actually lived.
Born pickled a bundle of brine, spit out with the pigs, stepped on, tossed aside, buried under the muddy rugs— the carpet chorus muffled, rolled up and stained with the slap of hands, wet dirt naming me sinner, naming me fool, while the silence screamed back.
Junk on my hands but my fists stayed open— bound wrists, tight-rope veins walking the thin edge of despair, slippery slopes greased by whispers, shadows hoarding truths behind my spine.
I dreamed of the bottom of the bag— hiding in burlap shadows, draped over my shoulder, the sack of sorrow dragged uphill. The sun was a dagger, its glare split my skull, its fire pushed me to the peak where the earth yawned open.
And I fell.
Down through the dirt, down to the roots that never asked forgiveness, that held the mud and called it life.
I planted my name there, deep in the soil. The weeds forgave me.
I sprouted new hands, climbed the hill backward— not to escape but to meet the sunrise and the bruised boy I’d left behind.
I held his face in my palms. I said, “We are here now.” And he disappeared into the light.
Gratitude isn’t a hymn or a handshake. It’s a bruise you press to remember you survived. A quiet mutter to the chaos for sparing you—this time. It’s outliving a child but remembering the magical brilliance he brought you in just 19 years.
It’s not for the gods, the gurus, or the grifters. They’ve taken enough. Gratitude lives in the cracked things: the last drink in the bottle, the skulled wedge that hits the flag at 100mph and drops in the hole, the night that didn’t kill you.
Keep it small. Keep it sharp. Fold it in your pocket like a cheap map out of hell. And remember, you’ve been beaten but not defeated.
Uncivil Savages: The Erosion of Civility in a Savage Age
Civility, that once-vital lubricant of a functioning society, now teeters precariously on its last legs, kicked aside with all the grace of a drunken reveler who never liked the furniture to begin with. It is no longer simply neglected; it’s actively mocked—dismissed as the sanctuary of the timid, the foppish indulgence of those too weak for the robust sport of perpetual outrage. As we gaze into the murky waters of the next four years, the pertinent question isn’t whether civility will vanish entirely. No, it’s whether we’ll even remember what it looked like in the first place.
The Savage Within
The modern savage isn’t wielding a club or grunting in a cave; they’re armed with hashtags, shouting into echo chambers, or gleefully dissecting opposing views with the precision of an online executioner. Today’s weapons of choice are not crude but digital, their reach vast and their anonymity reassuring.
Social media, initially heralded as a tool for connecting the world, now functions as the coliseum of modern life. Algorithms, bless their little mechanical hearts, work tirelessly to ensure your biases are confirmed, your opponents vilified, and your indignation monetized. The result? A cacophony of tribal warfare where shouting replaces dialogue, and the loudest voice wins—not by merit but sheer decibels.
Progress? If you squint hard enough, maybe. For now, it looks a lot like shouting into a void where no one is listening.
The Next Four Years
Spoiler alert: things will probably get worse before they get better. Expect technology to turbocharge the descent, with AI crafting propaganda so perfectly attuned to your anxieties that you’ll almost thank it for ruining your day. Political leaders, meanwhile, will continue to treat governance as performance art, pandering to their bases with the finesse of carnival barkers.
Economic inequities, that ever-reliable tinderbox, will grow more pronounced, ensuring we all have someone else to blame for our frustrations. Society will fracture further into opposing camps, each more convinced of the other’s villainy.
But wait—there’s hope! It’s faint, like a candle in a gale, but hope nonetheless. History has an odd way of veering from the inevitable, often just as we’re about to walk off the cliff. Perhaps the collective fatigue of perpetual division will push us toward something better. Or perhaps not.
The Case for Civility
Let’s be clear: civility is not a genteel pat on the head or a spineless retreat from confrontation. True civility is a high-wire act, requiring strength, discipline, and the kind of self-control that feels almost quaint in an age of instant gratification.
Civility is the ability to wield words with care rather than as cudgels, to see disagreement as an opportunity rather than a threat. It’s not for the faint of heart; it takes guts to stay your hand—or your tweet—when outrage is just a click away.
Leaders have a part to play, but so do we all. Institutions, for all their flaws, can only do so much. The real work of civility begins at the individual level: in how we speak, how we listen, and—dare I say it—how we hold ourselves accountable for the tone we set.
A Savage Choice
“Uncivil savages” isn’t just a turn of phrase; it’s an epitaph in waiting. The choice before us is stark: cling to the transient thrill of division, orinvest in the far more arduous—and infinitely more rewarding—pursuit of shared humanity.
Civility is not a decorative frill on the tapestry of society; it’s the very thread holding it together. Lose it, and we’ll find ourselves unraveling at a pace that even our most cynical forebears would find alarming.
Here’s the irony: to rise above our basest instincts, to practice civility in the face of chaos, will require a kind of savagery of its own. The savagery of courage, of restraint, of refusing to give in to the cheap allure of anger.
Let’s hope we’ve got it in us—because if not, the only thing left to fight for will be the ashes of what could have been.
