By the time the city learned to manufacture sunlight, nobody remembered the warmth of the real thing. The streets hummed with surveillance, the buildings breathed artificial air, and every window displayed the same carefully curated sky. We had surrendered our gardens for laboratories, our privacy for protection, our dreams for the convenience of obedience.
Yet, somewhere beneath the concrete, wildflowers continued to fracture the pavement. Someone had begun leaving handwritten poems on the walls, someone else was teaching children the names of extinct birds. Who can utter the poignance of all that is constantly threatened, invaded, expended.
Perhaps the last revolution will not arrive with gunfire or burning flags, but with something far more dangerous: the refusal to become numb. A forbidden song, an unregistered thought, a flower growing where nothing should. Even now, the world has not entirely surrendered its wildness.
Photo credits: Red poppies in a meadow, Pexels.
Posted for Prosery: From a purely aesthetic viewpoint, Levertov @dVerse Pub
One Response
A beautifully written dystopian Prosery piece, Sanaa. I couldn’t live in a world with manufactured sunlight, but I can believe that wildflowers would lead a revolution – they can grow pretty much anywhere! And I love the thought of people leaving handwritten poems on walls and teaching children the names of extinct birds. That reminds me of yarn bombers and guerilla gardeners we see around UK towns and cities.