prologue: don't go gentle
Looking back on that night, I imagine Route 5 was silent. Obviously not literally silent, I mean the guy was shot nineteen times after all. But unnaturally silent. I imagine the native pokémon didn't make a sound for him. I imagine nature itself stopped completely. As if it were expressing its shame for its government, I imagine the wind stopped in its tracks, the rivers stilled with apprehension, the trees firmly solid. I imagine when the swarm of government officials all raised their guns at the same time and began to fire, and he chucked that forsaken poké ball with all his might into my life, nature lamented him with silence.
I know better now. I've learned first-hand since then the world doesn't stop for tragedy, only people do. In actuality, when those bullets penetrated that man and he hit the ground, the wind continued to blow, the trees continued to dance, the river continued to ripple, and the pokémon continued to live in blissful ignorance of the wrong done in their home.
My late mother was an avid poet, well, before the government began to regulate poetry and all artistic media for "harmful propaganda." A framed illegal copy of "Do not go gentle into that good night" still hangs in the living room of my house. She got it before Kalos went to shit. It was her favorite. As a kid I always just thought it was about a dude begging his dad not to die, but my mother always said she thought it was about not giving up without a fight, even if the cause seems futile. Often I think about that poem and its message and what might've happened if my mother had considered it in her final days. She and my father might still be alive.
My mother's interpretation of that poem still sticks with me today. In the beginning, I was only concerned about staying alive, but along the way I realized that too many people died for their gentility, for nothing. Because they didn't fight they were now six feet under. At some point, that didn't sit well with me. Along the way I realized that being bitter about the way my life turned out wasn't helping anyone. Along the way I resolved that I would make a difference or die trying.
My mother always said there are two sides to every story, and I could present mine to you with some nobility. I could tell you all the good guys win in the end, that karma is real and the universe has a funny way of repaying its debts, but I would be lying, and I've been exposed to too much revisionist history in my lifetime for me to be okay with that. Instead, I will represent the events of my life that led up to this point as cleanly and clearly as I remember them. My story isn't noble or glamorous, and I'm no heroine. I'm oppressed, and my story is the simple recollection of how I tried, and quite possibly failed, to give Kalos back to its people.
