Cold

I tapped against the table with my fingers, skipping all but my index - for I'd sliced the delicate skin there beneath the nail and was tenderly babying it - as I stared ahead. I watched people with utter silence, observing and making note of the beings that existed in a space I expanded and contracted in, noting their flaunted offences that they had no issue baring spears and knives at.

I suppose... My eyes cast to the table and I wiped at it, like I was clear graphite from my paper, like I was cleaning my space of any filth, that I might have been an offender to them. A perceived threat. But... Couldn't they be said too, one in the same?

We were, for all intents and purposes, enemies on a similar plane, ready to destroy each other for whoever struck first, but trying to be effective in a community demanding change at a place where tug and pull came to beliefs and rights.

Commonly, we might have conversed in more friendly terms, parted ways if both of us were amicable people, but that couldn't be said of one, and I was not it.

I had no intention to oust people, to point knives at them and call for a guilotine. I was merely an observer in an environment, noting my boundaries and limitations to skirt by the death toll bell that I could have rung. Like I was ringing a dinner bell to my demise.

Those who speak loudest in silence often are the ones with the strongest lead against opposition, are they not? Ready to lay down their lives to an oncoming death. Ready to slay down any who they can leverage equal ground with.

After all, aren't we all just purveyors of faith, wearing the armor of our belief under our skin?