die in

at the protest today, the masses stopped at an intersection near cambridge street close to city hall. people stopped in their marching tracks, lied down and laid there with their signs on their chests or their bare hands by their sides. a wavelength out, others kneeled at their heads and feet, almost in a prayer like position. behind them, the last wave stood, protecting the sanctity of the moment within. and in an instance of a few seconds, the chants and the chatter and the car horns stopped, in unison, orchestrated by some invisible force. silence. dead silence. i slipped my phone away from my ear. i felt the stillness that i had lost weeks ago, that i have been fighting to find every sleepless night this week. the city has never seemed so still, neither so electric. i looked all around me and saw a statuesque representation of the dead, and it became too much for me. four minutes of silence has never seemed so long. imagine four hours. imagine a lifetime. for the first time, i cried about it all. overwhelmed with a sense of sadness for that silence, but also overcome with the power of the people, to become one so seamlessly, as if it was a natural instinct.