Closing Remarks On This Week's Tragedy

where do we go from here

I sit as the smoke curls above me
from my own flame not the ruins
of my home collapsed above me

I sit in a dress
in the warmth of my house
my heart a blanket for the dead
in Syria, in Berlin, in Oakland in
wherever this week we lost senselessly

the shivering outside on my block
I give them what I have — food, cash
I want to give them a hug
lead them to safety but
where do I go
when I no longer know what safety looks like

when the living room of denial is the most dangerous place on Earth

I sit in the deafening silence of
my own swirling thoughts they
flood out of my eyes like fountains
I want to bottle this water and send it

to: Standing Rock
to: Flint, Michigan
to: the baby, face down on the beach
who reminded the world that "refugee"
is a synonym for "human"

how did we connect the world through wire
globalize our ideas and yet drift so far
from understanding one another

how do we break free from our islands
crumble our own invisible walls
so that we may re-learn how to:
meet a gaze
return a favor
spend on saving lives instead of soy milk

I know I'm not the only one who thinks
the Earth is sick and I, too, have the cure
within me but I am too busy fighting
 for self-validation so I can fill the void
of feeling connected and meaningful with
any other kind of rush —

Aleppo burns, America scrambles
to make itself great again beneath
the pressure of mistakes past they
multiply like ghosts hang like smog
thick over China coughing beneath
the masks meant to protect us —

relearning how to breathe will not be easy

it will take time and instruction

it will take softening

into the hard places

where despair has made a home

it will take outstretched hands 

remembering how to make a circle 

how to wrap around another  

how to stand together  

so we may never 

have to stand

alone.