Reform — Ugly
They call it reform. But it’s not. It’s a party, and it’s ugly. Ugly in the way a smile looks when it’s hiding hunger. Ugly in the way a promise sounds when you already know it’s broken. They stand on the podium, tie knots of words so tight you can’t breathe between them. They call it progress: but I see frost forming on my grandmother’s hands. Our grandparents are shivering through winters that look too much like the ones they thought they’d buried. Gas bills blooming like bruises on the kitchen table, blankets piled like apologies that never came. They fought wars— real ones. Theirs were in trenches, in factories, in fields of silence and mud. They came home with ration books and hope stitched into their coats. Now they watch as the ones to blame, theirs are gone, the new ones wear better suits; still talk about tightening belts as if the belts aren’t already cutting into bone. Reform, they say. Reshape. Rebuild. But they mean: remove, reduce, forget. It’s an ugly party, dancing...