Prompt #447
PROMPT #447I was reading a quote by Albert Camus and stopped at a sentence.Communication is impossible with slaves.
Reena’s Xploration Challenge #447
The Microphone Is Still On
He held the microphone
as though possession of it
proved he had a voice.
His mouth was locked.
Not by another man’s hand.
Not by law.
Not by chains forged in iron.
The lock bore a simpler word:
IDEOLOGY.
Still, he tried to speak.
Around his neck hung every certainty
he had collected over the years—
I know.
They are wrong.
We are right.
There is nothing more to discuss.
The chains became heavier
with every declaration.
Someone approached him.
“I want to understand,” she said.
He couldn’t hear her.
He had forgotten about the earplugs.
Perhaps that was the cruellest part.
We often imagine silencing
as something done to us.
A hand over the mouth.
A forbidden book.
A censored page.
A voice removed from the room.
But there is another kind.
The prison we build
when we decide there is nothing left
for another human being to teach us.
Communication requires more
than permission to speak.
It requires the possibility
that we might listen
and emerge from the conversation
slightly changed.
Otherwise, we are not communicating.
We are broadcasting.
Two microphones.
Two speeches.
Two people waiting impatiently
for the other to stop talking.
No meeting place between them.
Perhaps the most dangerous chains
are not the ones somebody fastens
around our bodies.
They are the ones we polish ourselves,
call conviction,
and eventually forget
we are wearing.
The microphone is still on.
The world is still speaking.
The key has been in his pocket
all along.
But first,
he has to remove the earplugs.
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
https://ditto.fm/silenced-but-not-broken
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