Have you let yourself weep?
Have you let yourself weep, yet?
Have you imagined what it was like to think “is that music or gunfire?”
Have you imagined waiting for a bus for the last time?
Have you imagined rushing into a panic room to flee missiles
only to realize the danger is walking
house to house?
Have you called your family in a panic
thinking they might be able to save you?
Have you called your family knowing
it will be the last time you say I love you?
Have you let your body be broken
and pinned underneath the rubble
of an ex-home or
an ex-school or
an ex-hospital?
Have you wondered when someone might find you -
that it might be too late?
Have you found a moment to feel what’s underneath
your
to-do’s and email and
messages and chores and responsibilities?
Have you let yourself watch videos of the invasion?
Have you seen the buildings pushed into the ground from above?
Have you seen fathers carrying bloodied rag-doll daughters
to medics after it’s too late?
Is watching and reading about it on your to-do list?
Has it been on in the background, like a TV in the waiting room?
Has it disrupted you?
Your productivity,
your deadlines,
your responsibilities?
Have you invited it in?
Or have you barricaded it into a prison
with nowhere else to go?
Have you let yourself feel
the fear?
the anger?
the grief?
the horror?
the hatred?
Did you hear about Haiti, and Sudan, and Venezuela too?
Have you imagined living under something
that is always against you?
Have you imagined the mindfulness
it takes to be restrained?
To be precise about who the enemy is and
what’s acceptable to defeat them?
In a war you are not fighting,
have you imagined the BRAVERY
after losing your mother and father,
your daughter, your son
your brother, your sister
your wife, your friend
to not paint the whole world with a target?
