The Table and the Crowd, 01.19.25
They laid it all out for you,
a feather, a rose, a knife, a gun,
and me.
Standing still as air,
a canvas stripped of will,
a body for your whims.
The rules were simple:
do what you want—
I will not resist.
At first, you were kind.
The feather brushed my cheek,
soft like an apology whispered
from a distance you dare not close.
You placed the rose in my hair,
gentle hands unsure
of how much pressure would break me.
But kindness is fleeting,
a fragile thread
snapped by curiosity’s blade.
A bolder hand traced the knife
against my skin,
not cutting,
but testing.
And then, another—
and another—
and the crowd began to change.
You watched each other,
eyes flickering,
seeking permission in the movements of the mob.
One pushed the limits,
and so the next went further.
The rose was plucked from my hair,
its stem snapped, its petals crushed
beneath impatient feet.
The feather became a gag,
stuffed into my mouth as laughter rippled,
dark and growing.
Someone picked up the gun,
held it against my temple.
For a moment, silence.
Would they pull the trigger?
Would you?
Some of you screamed for mercy.
You begged the others to stop,
to put the gun down,
to see me as human,
but your voices were swallowed whole,
drowned by the roar of those
who wanted to see me fall.
I stood there.
Silent.
Alone.
Inside my own mind,
a witness to my own desecration.
This was the point:
to let you see yourselves,
to hold up a mirror smeared with my blood,
to show the artist’s final truth—
you, too, are capable of cruelty.
Even you, the one who hesitated,
the one who said no.
With enough voices urging you forward,
with enough hands holding the knife,
you could learn to cut.
The limits of decency,
as thin as the blade
that danced against my throat.
When the performance ended,
I walked toward you.
The crowd parted like smoke,
your faces turning away.
You couldn’t meet my eyes,
but I saw you.
And you saw me—
a girl, not a symbol,
not an object.
Flesh, breath, heart.
The table was empty,
but the point had been made:
It’s not the gun,
not the knife,
not the hands that wield them.
It’s the crowd, the permission,
the silence that fuels the fire.
You taught me who you are,
and I will never forget.
But I still stand here,
alone in my head,
proving a point you refuse to admit—
that even in your modern world of values and rules,
violence is always just one step away.
When you find yourself amongst the crowd,
ask yourself...
am i the feather, or the gun?I. The Loneliness Before the Crowd
I’ve never really fit in. That’s not self-pity, it’s just the quiet truth that has followed me through every space I’ve entered. I’ve always felt like I was standing slightly outside the circle, close enough to feel the warmth of the fire but never quite invited to sit down.
I wanted so badly to belong. To build something that mattered. To create community, not just for myself but for others who felt the same ache for connection. So I gave everything I had: time, energy, care. I tried to build places where people could be real, where pain wasn’t taboo, where love and identity and survival could coexist without shame.
But every time, it backfired.
No matter how gentle my intentions, people found ways to twist them. I watched compassion turn into suspicion, friendship into gossip, love into leverage. I’d open my heart, and somehow, someone would turn it into a weapon.
After a while, I started to see a pattern. Every act of sincerity seemed to become an invitation for cruelty. And still, I kept trying. Because that’s what you do when you believe in people even after they’ve broken your trust. You keep setting the table.
II. Building Community, Breaking Open
People talk about “community” like it’s a cure for loneliness. But the truth is, community is made of people and people are complicated. They come with needs, insecurities, egos, and fears. They come with wounds. And sometimes, when you try to bring them together, those wounds start bleeding all over each other.
I learned that the hard way.
I’ve been part of circles that started with love and ended in chaos. I’ve seen people rally around an idea, only to tear it apart the moment someone disagreed. I’ve been the person who tried to hold it together, who tried to be kind when things got ugly. And each time, I became the scapegoat. I became the one who absorbed the blame, the projection, the silence.
It’s strange, being both the builder and the target. You try to hold space for people’s pain, thinking you’re helping them heal, but sometimes all you’re doing is standing still while they unload it onto you. And when they’re done, they walk away lighter, and you’re left with the weight of it all.
That’s what it feels like to be the table.
III. The Performance That Mirrored My Life
When I read about Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0, something inside me recognized itself. She stood still for six hours, letting strangers do whatever they wanted to her. Seventy-two objects were laid out on a table: a rose, a feather, a knife, a gun. She didn’t move, didn’t resist. By the end, the audience had turned violent. They cut her skin. They aimed the gun at her head.
She didn’t flinch. She simply held up a mirror.
That performance haunted me because it felt like my own life made visible. Every time I’ve tried to build community, every time I’ve tried to be kind, I’ve felt like I was standing there motionless, watching people test how far they could go.
That’s where my poem The Table and the Crowd came from. It wasn’t just about Abramović’s art—it was about the realization that I have lived it.
IV. The Anatomy of Permission
The poem starts softly, like kindness always does:
“The feather brushed my cheek, soft like an apology whispered from a distance you dare not close.”
That’s how cruelty begins wrapped in tenderness. People start gentle. They say they care. They want to help. But curiosity grows. They want to know what happens when they push a little harder. And once one person crosses a line, the rest follow.
In Abramović’s performance, as in life, cruelty spreads through permission. The moment one person harms without consequence, everyone else feels safer doing the same. It’s not that they’re evil. It’s that the crowd gives them permission to stop being accountable.
And that’s what my poem exposes: the transformation of the feather into the knife, of empathy into entertainment. I’ve seen that transformation up close: in online spaces, in friend groups, even in the queer community I love. All it takes is one person to set the tone, one whisper to start the storm.
Silence is its own form of violence.
V. Standing Still
There’s a line in the poem that says,
“I stood there. Silent. Alone. Inside my own mind, a witness to my own desecration.”
That’s not metaphor. That’s memory.
I know what it’s like to be the one everyone talks about but no one talks to. To see your name pulled apart in conversations you aren’t in. To watch people you thought were friends look away when you’re being torn apart because it’s safer for them to stay quiet.
And the silence becomes deafening.
There’s this illusion that cruelty is loud and obvious, but often it’s quiet. It’s people who don’t intervene. It’s messages left unanswered. It’s someone watching you burn and calling it “not my business.” That’s the crowd. That’s how violence survives in so-called progressive spaces: through politeness, through avoidance, through self-preservation disguised as neutrality.
I’ve come to realize that I’ve been performing endurance for years. I stand still because movement makes people uncomfortable. I stay quiet because speaking up makes me the problem. I let people test their limits on me because I think maybe if they see themselves clearly enough, they’ll stop.
They rarely do.
VI. The Aftermath
When the performance ends, when the shouting dies down and the gossip burns itself out, you’re still there. Standing in the wreckage. People who once adored you avoid your eyes. They’ll talk about the “situation,” but not to you. They’ll mourn the loss of what you built while pretending they had nothing to do with its collapse.
And you’re left wondering: did any of it mean anything?
I wrote this poem to answer that question. Yes, it meant something. It always means something when you reveal the truth of who people are. Even if they deny it, even if they hate you for it. Every time I’ve been hurt, every time I’ve been used, I’ve learned something about the way kindness exposes people.
Because kindness isn’t passive. It’s dangerous. It holds up a mirror that people can’t stand to look into. And when they see their reflection, they often respond with cruelty, because it’s easier to destroy the mirror than to face what it shows.
VII. The Crowd in the Modern World
We like to believe we’re civilized. We talk about ethics, empathy, social justice. But the truth is, the same psychology that drove Abramović’s audience still drives us today. It’s just digital now.
Social media is one endless table, and the crowd never sleeps. A single accusation, a rumor, a screenshot, and the same dynamic unfolds. People test their limits. They want to be part of something righteous, to prove they’re good, to show they belong. But in that rush to be seen as moral, we lose our humanity.
I’ve been on the receiving end of that digital crowd. I’ve felt what it’s like to watch hundreds of strangers decide who you are based on half a story. I’ve seen people who once claimed to love me join in because silence would make them complicit. So instead, they chose performance over truth.
And I’ve realized something terrifying: the crowd doesn’t care about truth. It cares about cohesion. It feeds on consensus.
That’s why I end the poem with the question:
“When you find yourself amongst the crowd… ask yourself: am I the feather, or the gun?”
It’s not a rhetorical question. It’s the one that keeps me awake at night.
VIII. Reclaiming the Narrative
Writing this poem was my way of reclaiming power. Of turning pain into art instead of letting it rot inside me. Of saying, “I see what you did, and I survived anyway.”
The table is no longer a place of sacrifice. It’s a mirror. It’s where I stand to say: you can do what you want to me, but I will still tell the truth. I will still name the thing that everyone pretends isn’t there.
I don’t write from bitterness. I write from the understanding that humanity is fragile. I write from the quiet spaces between betrayal and forgiveness, from the thin line between hope and resignation. I write because if I don’t, then the crowd wins.
The poem isn’t about revenge. It’s about revelation. It’s about showing that cruelty doesn’t begin with monsters. It begins with ordinary people who stop questioning themselves.
And maybe, by standing still, by holding up that mirror, I can make someone see it before it’s too late.
IX. What Remains
Sometimes I think about what would happen if I stood there again, if I laid it all out: the feather, the rose, the knife, the gun, and myself. Would anything be different now? Would the crowd hesitate? Would someone finally say no before it went too far?
I want to believe they would. I want to believe that maybe, after everything, people are capable of learning. That the ones who once turned away might someday stand between me and the gun.
But I’ve also learned not to depend on that hope. The world has taught me that survival is often a solitary act. Community is precious, but it is not guaranteed.
Still, I keep building. I keep writing. I keep showing up to the table, even when I know it might break me. Because I believe that real, raw, and human art, can still change something, even if it’s only one person at a time.
And maybe that’s the point.
To keep standing.
To keep reflecting.
To keep holding up the mirror until someone, somewhere, sees themselves and finally chooses the feather instead of the gun.
Marina Abramović’s performance wasn’t just art. It was a mirror held up to humanity’s darkest truths. She stood there, unmoving, unresisting, and the crowd revealed themselves, not to her, but to each other. Kindness was fleeting, decency fragile, and it took so little, just the sight of another person pushing a boundary, for others to follow. Violence, cruelty, hate. These aren’t distant, alien things; they’re inside us, waiting for permission, waiting for a crowd to absolve us of the blame. The lesson is raw and undeniable: no matter how civilized we believe we are, the line between compassion and destruction is paper-thin. And when no one holds us accountable, we will cross it.
When you find yourself amongst the crowd - the thousands of messages being sent out over a single person’s apparent harm, ask yourself:
am i the feather, or the gun?