Sitting on a Stone Bench Outside Wall Street

Rain splashed down, striking stone. A single tear slipped and fell, swallowed by the cracks in the ground. Droplets echoed pain and sadness, but feet thundered on by, drowning them out. And the rain fell harder, crashing down around me, and washing my life away, across this stone bench outside Wall Street.

Their voices rose higher, the next century shot heard round the world. Their signs flashed like lightning searing the sky. Their hearts thundered, and their souls roared. They were the lions no longer lambs, and they were no longer ghosts easily erased. They would be heard, and their voices rose higher. And I silently spoke with them.

My life was the stack of papers left upon a desk. Every job I owned was a single page. I dreamt of being more, wanted to be more, but my life now has four walls. I should be lucky, grateful for I once had no security or benefits but page after page of dead-end jobs, jobs that led me through the unfortunate worlds of retail and fast food. I tore through the classifieds, hell-bent with fury across the career builder websites, but a good portion of my life was spent in the halls of unemployment. But that was not in today's world.

I was the Catch-22. My degree lied in Mass Communications, focused in Critical Analysis, but it was far from a key to my future. To get the job, I needed experience, but how do I get experience without the job? They never answered that question. They just fed me lines like saying, "Thank you for coming in today, and we'll be in touch." I especially loved when they told me that they would be interviewing others before they had an answer for me. Now, they're overwhelmed, barely able to pick and choose. I would have no chance today, and neither did they, those that shouted and screamed. And I silently shouted and screamed with them.

Where did we go wrong? How did we get here? Those were the headlines missed in the newspaper. Those were the real questions not being asked on television. Instead, we played the blame game. Those that wanted our respect spat out blatant lies and called us communist, if we dared to step out of line. We turned to cable, hoping for hope, but the lies were there too, spoken by those that were supposed to hold our best interests at heart. This is why I burn the newspaper. This is why I live without television. Yet, what they are doing here has reached my ears, and I have come to bare witness to their event, changing the world one breath shouted after another.

But all hope hasn't been lost. We keep fighting. They keep fighting. We'll survive. Someway, somehow, we would survive, and jobs would return, despite disbelief. There are others trying to help us. The websites remain, offering assistance. It is a dog eat dog world, but the dog has lost its teeth. Things have to change. We have to change. We have to be heard, and they have been heard. And my heart is the storm driving them home as I sit on a stone bench outside Wall Street.