Only Once

“We must look with the eyes of a child and ask for the moon.?

We must ask for the moon and believe that it can be placed in our hands.”?

Federico García Lorca

You invent strange words that we can’t understand.

Words like "Future," "Successful person," "Promotion," "Career," "Maturity," or "Becoming someone in life." Words like "Coming of age" or "Adulthood."

Words you put into our mouths, making us chew them over and over like bland mush. Words we spit out as soon as you turn your back and can no longer see us—because no one can swallow them.

Because they are just that: words that have no taste, that say nothing, that are nothing.

We know you have your favorite words. “Homeland”, ‘War’, ‘Border’, ‘Foreigner’, ‘Order’, "Diplomacy". When you use them you roll your eyes and your face transforms in a strange way as if making grotesque grimaces. You scare us when you use those words. We want to get out of there fast when we hear them from your lips. In our language, we call them “arrow-words”.

If only you’d listen to ours. Just once. If only you understood why we often stay silent and let you continue with your absurd grandiloquent nonsense. If you could truly grasp our silences... things would get better.

We let you talk and spew out words without rhyme or reason. Here and there. In classrooms, doctor’s offices, speaker podiums, factories, and museums. "Grades," "Work," "Vacations," "Divorce," "Money," "Status," "Mental health," "Diet," "Recess," "Ipad" "Freetime," "Exhibitions," "Family Programs,". What do you mean by them? We often laugh at you and your parrot-like antics, and you don’t even notice. You’re too caught up in your own voices, listening only to each other.

You create strange things, meaningless things—jobs with bosses, schools with exams, schedules, laws with punishments, political parties no one understands, technology no one wants, money that pays time, time that is in the form of a calendar with holidays. You teach us how to paint stencils without getting out of line. If we do, you punish us by forcing us to get back behind the line. You like to keep us in line. Show who's boss. Things you claim help us grow and "progress properly." To become "who we are meant to be." To "be someone in life," you say. As if we aren’t already someone. As if we’re never enough for you. As if it’s up to you to decide what we are or aren’t.

If only you’d let us take part in these things just once. If you realize that none of it can ever work as it should without us. If you accepted that you aren’t the smartest and we aren’t the dumbest... maybe then things would start to change.

But to you, we’re superficial, lazy, "still developing," unstable, distracted, always daydreaming, immature, unpredictable, too slow or too fast, half-baked, even more unpredictable, fool, emotional, and a thousand other things you invent to keep us from the disaster you’ve created. It’s your safety mechanism, so you don’t feel the shame you should when you look us in the eyes, knowing that our future will be worse than yours. And all thanks to how "well" you’re handling everything. This is something we talk about often when you’re not around.

You constantly complain about how bad the world is, how horrible everything is, how dangerous life is. "Threat," "Risk," "Crisis," "Polycrisis," "Dystopia," "Catastrophe," "Being realistic,". This world you’ve created without letting us have a say in it. You scare us with your hysterical shouts and make us anxious with your howls and roars like crazed beasts.

But these are your fears, your boring fantasies, your anxieties—not ours. You live in terror, and you need us to be terrified too so you can swoop in at the last moment and "save us," just to be condescending all over again, showing us how much we need you. How important you are and, consequently, how insignificant we are. How little we are without your help.

If only, just once, you set aside the arrogance that blinds you and makes you rush toward the cliff. But no—you want, you need, to drag us along with you. You need to convince us that jumping into the void together is the only "reasonable" thing to do, with you, for you. If only, just once, you let us stop and look around. If only, just once, you let us say "enough," or "it’s over," or "we’re going to do things differently now," maybe then you’d start to see us for who we are, not who you want us to be.

Because remember, it’s you who feel the need to invent us a thousand times a day—making us appear dumber than we are, less capable than we are. It’s you who give us words to replace our own, ensuring "everything comes to nothing." It’s you who stopped believing we could put the moon in your hands and the sun at your feet.

It’s you who betrayed yourselves forever on the day you abandoned the child you once were. But the child is still there, lost in the woods, reaching out to take the moon and give it back to you with an embrace.

If only, just once...