I was going to write about something would only burn on its way out and smolder once it hit the page. Something that I would regret writing later, something I would look at with disgust.

I was going to write something that indicts, perhaps even justifiably. Something to separate myself from the bile in my very own stomach. Something that would realign my reality according to some preconceived notion of what virtue looks like at its most regal. 

I was going to write about what virtue looks like when it's been beaten bloody and dragged toward a crucifix. But I thought that image might strike a nerve. 

So I will not write it into reality. That dark fantasy, no matter its promise of release and cleansing fire, is the sort that even Adam would recognize. Surely his demons live within me as they live within all of us, but at least we have the benefit of hindsight.

Simulating that hindsight has granted me restraint. Instead of railing against reality, I choose to embrace it. A small part of my consciousness has journeyed to the future to inhabit the eyes of someone studying this period of human history.

So I choke back the molten mass of angst and fear that would corrode the path forward, eating through all the haphazard progress we've made.

That we should all have the fortitude to swallow this reflux, to heal our body politic, to get on our hands and knees and dig for the common threads. That a few among us are still capable of weaving.