It’s not natural to us,
not our nature,
to embrace duality,
not each other.
It’s manufactured
for their profit,
like their power,
like the system,
inflating as we buy in.

When we sanction
this detachment,
choosing Ideology,
Rhetoric,
Catastrophizing,
Shame,
the machinations
infiltrate,
trojan horse,
wreaking havoc
from within.

The chasm
between our hearts
expands unconstrained.
While we suffer
broken lives and
broken bonds,
the officialdom’s
interests served
by our misplaced
discontent.

This division,
lined with border walls
and severed ties,
mirrors back
our worst projections.
We get caught up,
lose ourselves,
lose each other
to the machinery
for whose gain?

We aren’t meant to cling
to separations,
grasping empty
metallic promises
churned out
from the engine
of the status quo.

We’re meant to live in seasons—
Sowing and growing
Renewing and letting go—
the living things we are.

Neither manufactured division nor
false unity will save us.
Only clear seeing
of complexity,
of the need to repair harm,
of the unsustainability of
this us vs. them,
all or nothing,
dichotomy.

We are too much, too many
to be flattened into two.