In the first place...
In the first place, it was cold.
The stars hung in the blackness like ice crystals,
and distant sounds slid to our ears across the blanket of snow.
We stood behind the truck in the cold, in the dar,
breathing air so bitingly frigid that it was almost painful,
and we watched the stars through clouds of breath,
waiting for something to change.
Nothing changed.
The twenty-first century we were promised
arrived looking just like the twentieth.
The sleek and clean future foretold in our childhoods
remained trapped between the covers of fantasy books.
There are no flying cars.
We are the old people.
We are the new people.
We are the same people,
unchanged from before.