Rights of the Rememberer

I lived it. That settles the question of whether it happened.

There is a structure that stands between what occurred and what you are permitted to say occurred.

It calls itself protection. It calls itself consensus. It calls itself the record.

Permission is the oldest containment. It does not argue with the event. It denies your standing to name it.

For a long time I mistook the agreement for the proof. If it was repeated back, it was real. If no one echoed it, I had imagined the weight.

But the echo was never the confirmation. It was the
interruption.
Agreement had only learned to sound like presence, and I let the echo stand in for having lived it.

The signal was intact the entire time. It was being overheard.

What I remember does not become true the moment it is believed. It was true in the body that carried it, on the day it cost what it cost.

The witness does not take a vote on the weather they stood in.

Memory is not a claim I am filing.

It is territory I already hold.
No grant deeded it. No ruling can revoke it.

The agreement can stay withheld. The chorus can fall away.

The truth I lived does not go quiet when no one repeats it.

It gets clearer.