It began with people talking like the walls had ears. The light came in thinner at the windows. The lift carried damp and burnt metal. A neighbour looked down the corridor before saying a minister’s name. No paper trail. No clean account. Just words coming back altered. Public meant rentable. Necessary meant out of reach. Temporary kept its coat on. We carried on. We watered the plants over the traffic. We passed salt at dinner. We called caution common sense. We called quiet mercy. The city tidied its excuses. It laid decking over the bruise. It shut a fence around the missing. It put in neat young trees where the stacks used to stand. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME... IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. We kept our voices low after that. As if the room itself were sleeping. As if shame had any interest in waking. But the room was listening. It caught every lowered word. It kept count in the dark. Each morning, something thinned out. They re-zoned the clinic. They shortened the line. They filed away the ledger. They catalogued the bird after the sky was cleared. They emptied a word. Then leased it back by the gram. A barcode for the hunger. A route for the smoke. A code for the dead. A load for the living. Still, we behaved. We waited in line with our papers folded. We carried our anger like something fragile. We made room where we stood. We called that survival. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME... IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. No. Not bad luck. Not the weather. Not some grand force moving through. A signature on parchment. A cleared square. A meter on the tap. A patent on the seed. A measured gap. A practical application. Don’t call it failure. It was digestion. Look at it. That neat set of teeth. That flag pinned to its appetite. Those hands washed bright while ours stayed in the silt. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME... IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. And it did not arrive alone. It was ushered. It was stamped. It was given a podium. It was given police tape. It was given a gala dinner. It arrived through every small concession we were told was maturity. Enough geometry. Enough balance sheets. Enough waiting nicely for the concrete to soften. We are not your census. We are not your buffer zone. We are not mouths to cover until the fiscal year turns. Take the velvet off the wire. Take the polished phrasing off the wound. This city is not a ledger. This land is not a storage unit. The future is not a deposit you get to forfeit before we arrive. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME... IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. Because the hush was recorded as consent. Because patience was weaponized. Because every warning came back in a sanitized memo. Because compliance learned to call itself peace. We are done whispering. We will write it on the glass. We will press it through the turnstiles. We will speak it where the microphones wait. We will work against the mechanism until the steel gives way. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME... IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME... IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS.
