If You, Like Me

If you, like me, are having trouble focusing today

If you, like me, keep staring incredulously at the massive headline

FULL-SCALE ATTACK

If your thoughts, like mine, are a jumble of blown-out windows and families fleeing and lies swirling outward from state-sponsored machines suffocating sovereignty and truth

If you, like me, find yourself straining to see how this will go and knowing there's no good answer

If you, like me, are thinking about the parallels between wars, between megalomaniacs, insatiable predators who care only about consolidating power

If you, like me, feel frozen today by fear

If you, like me, question how you are supposed to work, make lunch, walk the dog, chat about inconsequential things, get ready for a snowstorm, much less make sense of things that make your head spin with equal parts terror and rage and grief

If you, like me, are sitting here, scrolling

If you, like me, sip a cooling cup of ginger tea and honey and (as you have your entire life) try to wrap your head around how so many realities can be happening simultaneously

If you, like me, feel small and helpless

If you, like me, feel scared and sad

If you, like me, feel the weight of the past and the fragility of the future sitting in your lap like heavy ghosts

If you, like me, hear the word "ethnic" and your blood feels cold in your veins and your body remembers something like a fever dream that shimmers just beyond your consciousness

If you, like me, wonder how much history the earth can hold before it is too full to soak up another drop of blood

If you, like me, will pray just in case it helps

If you, like me, are at a loss for words

At a loss for words
a loss
for the world
so much loss
so
much
loss
in this world

If you, like me, love this lost world so much

If you, like me, don't know what to do with so much love and loss

Then come, come bring it all here and let's make a fire of our words, that they might float up and come down not as ash but as protection for those in harm's way.