Things You Can Do (Fiona)
Fiona says
You’re not just anything. None of us are — my boy — my boy talks the same way — as if he doesn’t matter. As if they gave up. I didn’t raise him that way — he talks about TV. He talks about TV all the time — I don’t know what to say to him.
You don’t get it — back in the days before satellite defense systems, before ‘trickle down,’ in the days before the strip malls, in the days before fleece active wear — we thought we could change things — I felt like I mattered. I felt like I belonged — really belonged to something bigger than myself —
And since then I’ve spent all this time playing their rules and gathering with the other concerned citizens and writing letters and attending the hearings and the marches and you know — I know you know — it doesn’t matter. We say — wait! Stop! How about the park? How about the wild spaces? the air, the water, the children — We need to preserve those — those are important too. And they say ‘thanks, that’s nice, you’re right, we should’ and they bull-doze it. And now I’m out of time. But you aren’t. You are not. You.