We Were

No screens.
No fear.
Just airwaves.
And neon in our mirrors.

We danced into the data
Before the world got loud
No feeds, no filters, no alphas
Just Walkmans in the crowd
We trusted in our teachers
And feared no siren’s call
We built from sparks and silence
And didn’t want it all

We knew the world was burning
But still believed in green
Solar panels, protest marches
Futures on the screen
We made mistakes, we called them that
And fixed them if we could
We crashed, we cried, we carried on
And did the best we could
No one measured kindness
No one monetized the rain
We had space to lose direction
But we always found our lane

We were free
Not flawless, not forever
But something you could be
We had time
To fail and then to grow
Not just survive, but glow
We believed
In progress and each other
Before the algorithm's creed
We were light, not speed
We were…
Free

We burned through neon ballads
With Journey in our ears
Madonna broke the silence
And Cyndi wiped our tears
U2 brought revolution
The Police turned drums to gold
We painted worlds with Foreigner
And sang like we were bold

Then came the glass
In every hand
The scores, the swipes
The shrinking land
Noise got louder than the truth
And silence lost its name
We started liking images
And stopped playing the game

We counted hearts and followers
But lost the ones inside
We ran for clicks and comments
And forgot how not to hide
The rules outgrew the reasons
The forms outpaced the cause
We canceled for mistakes
But never paused for loss

Kraftwerk sparked the circuits
While Yello bent the rules
Erasure dressed the sadness
In digital perfumes
Alphaville dreamed futures
With buttons, pads, and light
The Eurythmics made us feel
In binary and night

We trusted in the future
And played without a net
We lived the sound, not streamed it
And we’re not done yet

We were free
Not flawless, not forever
But something you could be
We had time
To fall, and still believe
In dreams we dared to weave
We stood close
With no screen in between
No filters, just a scene
Of living, not a feed
We were…
Free

Depeche Mode lit the darkness
With whispers and machines
Guns N’ Roses tore the silence
And played behind the scenes
The Cure gave shape to longing
Phil Collins gave it a name
We lived inside those speakers
And never heard the same

We were free
Like lovers in the static
Like truth before the stream
We were sparks
Not optimized or planned
But real, and full, and grand
We believed
In talk, in time, in touch
In something more than feeds
We had less — and it was much
We were…
Free

Not perfect. Not pure.
But unafraid.
We didn’t always know the answer.
But we believed there was one.

And that we’d find it.
Together.