When It Was Them — On Silence, Complicity, and Consequence

I wrote “When It Was Them” as a response to something I think we all do more often than we’d like to admit.

We watch.

[When It Was Them

First it was someone else’s name

echoing down the hall,

someone else’s door kicked in,

someone else’s world reduced to smoke.

You watched.

You whispered, not my fight,

and folded your hands like nothing was burning.

Then it was closer—

a friend, a neighbor,

a voice you almost recognized

swallowed by sirens and ash.

Still, you watched.

Still, you said nothing.

Silence tasted safer than courage.

Brick by brick,

the world unstitched itself.

Streetlights flickered like dying stars,

and the sky learned the color of fire.

Fate does not bargain.

Truth does not blink.

Every action carves its shadow.

Every absence leaves a debt.

And when you are the last ones left,

backs to the fire,

breathing in the smoke of everything you let happen,

when the heat finally kisses your skin—

you will search for a voice

to cry out for you.

But silence

only ever answers

with silence.

I will be there,

not as savior,

not as judge,

But as your doom—

watching the flames write your lesson

across the dark,

watching the weight of consequence

crack your certainty,

and slowly,

quietly,

a smile will rise—

because the fire you feared

was never fate alone.

It was built

from every moment

you chose

not to speak.

Jeremy Faivre]

We see injustice, cruelty, people getting pushed aside or burned down metaphorically — sometimes literally — and we tell ourselves the same quiet lie:

It’s not my fight.

It’s not my problem.

It’s not happening to me.

It’s easy to feel safe when the fire is across the street.

This poem was inspired by that uncomfortable truth — and by the old warning that history keeps repeating: when you stay silent for others, eventually there’s no one left to speak for you.

But I didn’t want to rewrite that idea softly or sentimentally.

I wanted it to feel inevitable.

Heavy.

Like consequence, not comfort.

The heart of the poem

“When It Was Them” is about complicity more than cruelty.

Most destruction doesn’t happen because everyone is evil.

It happens because most people are quiet.

Not my fight.

Not my problem.

Not my risk.

Line by line, the world in the poem doesn’t explode all at once — it unravels.

Brick by brick.

Door by door.

Name by name.

Because that’s how it really happens.

By the time it reaches you, it’s already too late.

And that’s the point.

Why the tone is darker

Some of my writing lately leans cynical or intense, and this piece definitely sits in that space.

It’s not meant to be hopeful.

It’s meant to feel like a warning.

I didn’t want the speaker to sound like a hero or a savior. I didn’t want a moral high ground. So instead of “I’ll be there to help,” the voice says:

not as savior,

not as judge,

But as your doom—

Because consequence isn’t personal.

It doesn’t hate you.

It doesn’t rescue you.

It simply arrives.

Like gravity.

Like fire.

Like truth.

That line is less about vengeance and more about inevitability — the idea that if we build a world out of silence, we shouldn’t be surprised when silence is all that answers back.

The title change

I originally called it “When It Wasn’t You,” but changed it to “When It Was Them.”

That shift matters.

It’s more direct. More accusatory.

Less passive.

Because the poem isn’t about distance — it’s about responsibility.

Not it didn’t affect you.

But you chose not to care when it affected them.

That choice is the spark.

Everything else is just the fire spreading.

What I hope people take from it

I’m not trying to preach or point fingers.

If anything, this poem is aimed at myself just as much as anyone else.

It’s a reminder that silence has a cost.

That neutrality isn’t always neutral.

That every moment we look away is still a decision.

And decisions add up.

Because in the end, the scariest part isn’t the flames.

It’s realizing we helped build the match.

– Jeremy