I am told that during war
vocabularies shrink
and we lose words and meanings
but this current war
we have gained phrases
everyone from Grandma
to a kindergartener have learned:

You’re muted
Can you let me share my screen?
I will drop the link in the chat
You’re not muted
try turning off your camera
oh, we’ve lost her, maybe she will retry
You’re still muted.

The phrases that are now common
since March of 2020
when the world changed
and a microscopic speck
found a crack in our social structure
and eroded it further
a canyon, not so grand