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I am thinking of someone.
Someone who has overcome things.
That cannot be discussed.
With others.
Someone who has tested endurance.
Far beyond their capability.
Yet, questions their courage.
Someone who acts upon the most essential thing.
As being wealth in love and helping those in need.
Someone who attends to small things.
Who is last on the list of authority but takes the lead.
Places that can be their saving are not reached out for.
They are tending to the care of another instead.
Holding a hand to instill bravery when they themselves fear.
This someone is tremendous and skilful with their talent.
Joy, however brief instills the value of it.
It could be you I am thinking of.
(You wouldn't be reading this if it weren't so).
But today I am thinking of a particular someone.
One that has lived with a demand to reign in shreds.
Of what is human?
Where homes and lives are schorched and reduced to rubble.
A rudimentary education celebrates safety and protection from extinction.
This child bears witness to being one this world has no heroes for.
The eyes with this child are not particular.
Nor are they unique or singular.
Nor the case with dozens, nor of hundreds or thousands.
But hundreds of thousands.
Seeing and tasting, in their last moments no charm in slaughter.
This. On our watch. As recent humanity.
This child an individual with dreams and joyous comforts.
Pol Pot's reign of terror,
Iraq's slaughter of the Kurds,
Bosnian Serbs' mass murder of Muslims, and the
Hutu elimination of Tutsi are not distant memories.
All after holocaust.
As the unshakable suffering of unresolved atrocity.
Current and past, greater still, remains in our own.
These are histories without regard for the dignity of life.
They are sorrows that if our difficulties allow us to ignore
will become more indelible than already are.

child
2022