Legacy of Tiny Tombstones
We’ve wasted hours discussing politics, and amused ourselves by playing the devils’ advocate. Call it patriotism or ignorance but folks can spend centuries conveniently oblivious when the bullets aren’t shooting directly at them. Suited and booted in the comfort of our high-rises, we have the power to sanitize our words to paint the state of the world to our liking and shame those who care deeply by dubbing their rants as way too drastic – we can insist on living in denial but we can’t erase the dents made in our shoulders from carrying all these small caskets.
For while we argue about what to fund and what to neglect, what politician to support and which to condemn, what minority group to protect – while we pick and choose through atrocities rooted in reality based on what serves us best, another child is scrambling beneath a blanket, shielding themselves from predators that shape-shift or an all-too-familiar tirade of bullets.
It seems as though suddenly the world has shrunken into a paper ball scrunched in a fist that belongs to the few who are running this ship, afraid to loosen the grip that allows them to manipulate the truth to their benefit. They’re so hell bent on maintaining their positions that no measure is deemed as pushing the limit. Pulling people out of their homes and destroying places of worship, ignoring the rape and mutilation of the unprotected, gaslighting the poor for not being hardworking, creating a swamp of problems then shaming others for sinking, pushing people to the edge until they take their own lives and we shake our heads as if it speaks to their failing. And while the rest of us swim around dodging the inevitable, the bodies washing ashore belong to our innocent little children.
Children that don’t have a say in the law and order, nor do they have a seat at the table and yet they’re at the frontlines of a losing battle. Children that are taught wrong from right, but then see their father dragged away in the middle of the night. Children that are told to believe in a God but tread amongst devils pouncing upon them the second no other adults are in sight. Children that are raised with love and taught to be kind, but before they get to extend what they learnt, they end up being the collateral damage when they were never even a part of the fight.
It doesn’t seem to matter what you agree with, and with what side you are aligned. It doesn’t matter how loudly you choose to raise your voice, and how softly you choose to disappear into the sidelines. It would be a stain on our generation to leave behind a legacy of tiny tombstones, but who are we kidding, for so many bodies disappear without ever emerging in our sight. So we acknowledge a death or two and then return to being blind, for after all, we aren’t the ones paying the price.