Aleppo

Fathers and mothers beg for the safety of their children.
They implore religious leaders if killing their children would be permissible to save them from rape and murder
Our purest of pure, this is their reality
Hate infiltrating their places of peace among the rubble
Wondering how they will ever escape
Feeling overwhelmed with the idea of safety
They cuddle in their protectors’ arms
The arms of protectors that feel that they have failed their little ones
“Why did I even have you? I am so sorry that I brought you into this world.”
When will their lives change?
Exhausted and cold
The soldiers are coming today
There is no celebrating
“They should be our peace”
“Instead they are our end”
Realizing that the only way for change is for death to knock on their doors

Across the lands and over the seas, people sit and watch in disbelief
They listen to the story of these people, dispossessed and slaughtered
Hearts aching to help, not knowing how
Screaming across their screens with words of disgust, fearfulness, sadness and prayers
Not able to do anything, yet able to do something
Caught in the onslaught of information
Growing more and more impatient with the world
Blood pressure rising, body feeling sick
We either find a way to do something or do nothing at all
Most times than not, we begin to ignore

What will happen when we are the victims,
What will happen when people watch our murders from the other side of that screen
Sitting at picnics and dinners, thinking how these stories burn, “but those aren’t my people”
“They aren’t me, and they are so far away.”
“7,000 miles away…..the shrapnel won’t hit me.”
Except that it already has and there is a rumbling coming this way.
We are one body.
When one part aches
Surely, the other parts fall into the same wounded rhythm.