Missing

Why am I still searching for the cowboys like me. In the classrooms, the office and creative spaces. The spaces that are non-inclusive of music and sports. Yet I love music, and tolerate sports. Continuously looking for faces like mine, and perpetually finding blank ballots waiting for their owners.

By now, I should have given up. I have not. Disseminating individual contributions, as if there is enough to go around, and searching for the illusive community that promises to reveal itself only for a moment. Closed doors and empty rooms manifest and resemble the internal void, the external lacking

Unity

Needs go unmet. Faces exactly the same is not the desired result, but that recognize a unified experience. Ones capable of giving and receiving respect for a mutual contribution, shared struggles and similar journeys.

The atmosphere is looking, requiring, and demanding the gathering. All shall be there.

You need this.

Potentially unable to recognize the need in yourself, yet willing to fill the need in others.

Risk it.

Individually able to propel and inspire , collectively able to effect change.

Spread this message of inclusion.

Shaking and shaking until apathy breaks loose. Until your value is apparent.

Recognize it, and mourn it’s disuse.

The space is cleared, the door unlocked, waiting for the impending reunion.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him. – J. Baldwin