voiceless

Madelyn Pecka, Staff Writer

i’m sorry.

i can’t hear you.

 

sometimes the only thing we have

is our voices.

 

you were beaten down,

oppressed,

told you were nothing,

and made to believe your voice

was meaningless.

 

Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others,

challenged that belief.

they took a stand and said,

“my voice means something and you must listen.”

 

they fought this injustice

inflicted upon them

with just their voices.

 

of course there was backlash

from a stubborn nation,

set in its ways of destroying voices.

 

the most contradicting nation

known to man.

 

“united we stand” they say.

“divided we fall” they persist.

 

we never started as a whole.

“separate but equal” implies not standing together.

can you claim we are united

if you seperate the population?

 

though we are moving together,

it is a slow, painful, unfair journey.

 

we are using our voices now more than ever.

the voices have earned us equal rights, however,

they have yet to gain equal treatment.

 

the only way we can get equal treatment

is through our voices.

we must honor those who were brave enough

to use their voices to get us where we are.

 

yet, right now, i don’t hear much.

i hear a faint whisper of a desire to end

the suffering and unfair treatment.

 

i implore everybody to use their voices,

we will be heard.

 

but right now,

i’m sorry,

i just can’t hear you.