The Silence That Votes
Poetry & Prose by Britt Wolfe
Evil will always reach for the crown.
It will gnash its teeth, sharpen its claws,
devour without shame.
That much is expected.
Power has always been a hunger.
But what sears me—
what hollows me out—
is how easily the masses
lay the table for their own undoing.
They do not simply allow atrocity.
They applaud it.
They call it order.
They call it freedom.
They stand in the ashes of their children’s future
and cheer because someone else’s body
burns hotter than their own.
They vote not for bread,
but for starvation—
so long as their neighbour starves first.
They will trade a living wage
for the satisfaction of a stranger’s ruin.
They will carve democracy into ribbons
if it means the ribbons can be used
to bind the throats of those they despise.
This is the part that rots deepest:
not the tyrant’s grasp,
but the people who slip the shackles
around their own wrists,
singing hymns of hatred
as though cruelty were holy.
Evil thrives not on brilliance,
but on blindness.
Not on force,
but on consent.
And the world is undone less by tyrants
than by the quiet majority,
hands folded, eyes averted,
content to watch liberty collapse—
so long as it buries the ones
they never wished to see exist.
KEEP MY WORDS ALIVE
If this poem has stayed with you, you can help keep my words alive or explore more of my work. Every bit of support helps carry the stories forward.
