Bring the phone.

Big feelings. Small words. No wisdom to speak of.

Bring the phone
-- for the witnesses in Minneapolis, especially the woman in the pink jacket

in the Before time,
you may have fooled yourself
into believing in privacy, fooled yourself
into trusting
trust—
and the concept of your own business,
which you’ve minded quite well until now.

you may have thought you (of all people)
were safe from the Eye and the Ears,
until you learned they could watch and
listen — did watch and
listen — had been
listening and tracking
everything, all of us, all along.
and you said to a friend, back then,
so what? i haven’t done anything
to feel guilty about.

but today you will learn that guilt
is irrelevant—
and relevance
does not matter.

you will get ready
again
for a march
for a vigil
for a protest— peaceful, you’ll say,
peaceful—

and you’ll write your attorney’s
details
with a sharpie
on your forearm and you’ll
pick up your keys—
and you’ll ask the empty room whether it’s safe
to bring
this tracking device—
this lifeline—
this collector of facts—

and you suspect that you’ll never (any longer) be anonymous—
not with the Eyes, the Ears, the Mouths,
in hot pursuit
with their stinking-dead-fish mounds
of so-called
evidence—

and the picture you will soon hold in your trembling
hand
will be worth a thousand lies.

Bring the phone.