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We were shattered long before we learned of this virus. We just did not see everything that was broken. Our minds were lost in cages, behind walls, in gross capitalism, classism, sexism and racism.

We were always hungry for lustful thoughts, lost time with children and elders, and mediocre food and wine. Substance was always missing from the American pie, with no filling and just an outer shell. Our souls were lost for a long time. We just couldn't see it.

However, 2020 was the year we saw. We saw that those cages were not housed with animals, those walls didn't stop a pandemic, the economy is nothing without the people's access to currency, gender is not power specific and a person's race is never a unifier. We saw politicians working for a president instead of the American people. We saw law enforcement enforce nothing but violence, with justice being served as only a backdrop and not a solution.

We saw pain and suffering from people who are outraged about being forced to protect themselves with face coverings, yet remain silent while we watched a human life being snatched away from this earth in front of our very eyes. But some of us still couldn't see that.

We saw how we can affect nature with climate so strange that the storms ran through all of the alphabets and continued to destroy life and possessions all to send us a message.

We f**ked things up! We have been doing it for years and now the consequences are here. We have allowed systemic racism to damage our Black people. We caused the storms of climate change. We gave birth to a criminal president because some of us wanted to be conned more than we wanted to see.

We wanted to be sold a dream. We did not want to wake up and 2020 was the year that some of our eyes finally opened. Even for those eyes that refuse to see, the vision is here, it is real and it is perfect.

Kizzy Curtis

Writing since February 2022 · 1 story contributed