Who we are
Fearing difference
Embracing gaps
We and our own
How we started
Arbitrating We
Downfield disregarded
We, not them
What we’ve become
Rigidly ignorant
Nonexistent others
No one but us
Who we will be
Delusioned safety
Pods of survivors
With their own
This poem was first inspired by the 2024 United States General Election, and elements of the final verse come from the societal structure of Earthseed: Parable of the Sower, one of a series of dystopian novels by Octavia Butler, first published 1993. In the setting of 2024 Los Angeles, communities have banded together into security-monitored, walled-in neighborhoods because the civilization around them is crumbling.