Vachon Imagined

The thought police arrive with good intentions and an oversized ego that says:

Not today, you inadmissible riot of my otherwise protective class.

There it is, the immediate prejudice dressed up as concern, or encouragement, or protection. The mind stepping in to stop the flow of life the way a detective stops the margins from disappearing off the page.

Hold it right there.

It is a cataclysmic invitation into the limitations of being human: the belief that we can stop something simply because we have named it, judged it, or decided it shouldn’t be happening.

Part the seas? You bet.

But ma’am, you’re still going too fast.

Slow it down.

Stop the life.

Create a divide inside yourself.

And years later, you’ll be searching for the dropped line, the one that needed to finish its sentence but was interrupted by an ending, an eclipse, a period.

The thought police steps out of the way.

“You may pass today, my subjects.”

And so we all speed along at just the right speed, convinced everything is in order because no one is watching the queues, no one is checking the speed limit, and apparently we have all agreed that life requires a permit.

Just cruising along.

Until the thought police throws up its badge again.

Nope.

This isn’t allowed.

Turn it around.

Only it doesn’t.

Life doesn’t turn around.

It waits.

It moves through the next person.

And the next.

The thought police can interrupt a sentence, but it cannot become the sentence.

It can create a prejudice, a division, a splintered self, a badge made of shining steel declaring, with absolute certainty:

You do not belong here.

It can convince you that something moving through you must be stopped, fixed, or healed, as though life were a problem requiring our supervision.

But life is remarkably patient.

It simply waits for someone else to pick up the line.

And keep writing.