We used to be great, you and I. Feared and respected. What more could one want? We had mastery over everyone, we thought. But time proved a greater adversary than we ever could have guessed.
For all our power, we were powerless over something as simple as a word. A word once whispered with fear, but then spit with hate, and then finally tossed out with indifference. Our feared symbol, now a tacky anachronism.
It could be worse. We could be alone. It's a cold comfort, this bargaining. Thinking as humans do. But even the immortal don't live forever.
Copyright (c) 2021 by Hugh Mackey
"Five sets of portraits of women and girls c1913" by crackdog is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.
