They scrolled through the news of death

The mother who shielded her baby

The son who left home to fight

The child whose innocence

Didn’t stir the men drunk on power.

They posted and reposted

The deaths that are numbers

Declared as inevitable to the cause.

They slept through endless

Bombing and hysterical sirens

That rang through the night

Breaking into the dawn of hope

That the victims got as grace to

Exist in the hell of forgetting

What freedom looks like, feels like.

They turned away from years of

Destruction borne silently by those

Who didn’t have the skin to be given

The dignity they deserved to live.

I write for the worlds ignored by the

Blinding whiteness of privilege

I write for the country that wants

Its home to be its people’s land.