Rest in Peace, Your Individuality
It died the day you moved into the
neighborhood of sameness.
No color, only grey.
Nobody, nothing
stands out.
Everything, Everyone
Identical
The guards of the city gates
do not allow creativity to filter in.
A sign posted in city hall reads:
Creativity is banished from Normal
Five hundred dollar fine for anyone who sneaks it within the city walls
I remember the days before
Your individuality died
You would sing offkey showtunes loudly
and instead of walking like everyone else did,
you would run and spin and skip and jump
like an innocent child just having fun,
not caring who is near or what they might think.
Now, you walk in a careful rollstep
left foot first, then right
eternally fearing that you might make a wrong move in your mind,
that someone will find out.
I remember the days when your friends became annoyed
that you decided "Antidisestablishmentarianism"
was an underused word,
that it probably felt left out
so you would try to incorporate
it into as many sentences as you
could, ignoring the actual definition.
All of the time syou smiled to yourself
when your friends rolled their eyes
after you told them they smelled
like antidisestablishmentarianism.
I remember the laughter in your eyes
when they finally told you to stop,
but you ignored them and continued
in a more subtle way.
Now, you only speak with ambiguity:
words like whatever, stuff, and cool.
You always avoid adjectives,
careful not to sound smarter or more
creative than the next citizen
of sameness.
No longer an original, you have become a copy of a copy of a copy.
First, you became a little blurry
then slightly off center
twisted and turning
halfway off the page
eventually, your individuality faded away to nothing
Oh how I mourn who you once were
when you were yourself
and not everybody else
