Bombs Upon Children

Hello Beautiful,

May I start with a question? I’d like to unearth some confusing perspectives.

When we don’t care, when we choose to look the other way; to ignore one another’s pain… what is it that stands in our way?

What prevents the human, each and every one of us from bending over, from bending down… from halting, held frozen in our tracks… from reaching out to gather up, to draw in and hold close no matter the course of a day’s intended aim… from caring for and from helping to heal at any cost… another human in pain? In need? What prevents a human from instantly stopping to aid and love another in the throes of suffering? How is it that we can go about our chores, the course of our daily lives… ignoring the anguish of a human child crying?

You see, I care. And I want to be heard. I want to matter. I want to matter to you. But sometimes, you refuse to listen. And this hurts. This hurts more than I have words to articulate and so I feel I need to scream. Do I feel angry? YES. Sometimes I feel a great hatred burgeoning inside, coming to life within my walls, and I want to shake you so hard, scream at you to stop. I want take you by your shoulders, look you in the eyes, force you to face my gaze and scream. I scream, “PLEASE, just look at me, I’m hurting.” I scream, “Please don’t keep on walking.” I want to shake you until you drop. “Enough of this madness,” I want to plead, beg for you to notice, to stand still and watch. For somewhere at this exact moment, in some dusty corner of our shared world… there is a tiny child lying in a shallow grave.

Baked earth, moistureless dirt is being kicked… upheaved into the air by the chaotic frenzy of grown feet, a sudden frenetic delirium of adults stronger in their bodies, more aptly astute in their intake of understanding are sprinting… adults are fleeing the scene of horrific catastrophe and the powder, a mix of debris, soot and arid clay earth is settling in her eyes. She’s struggling to intake her surroundings, to visually perceive. The smoke, floating bits of broken glass and pulverized concrete is making it hard to see. More urgently, she’s finding it difficult to breathe.

She’s being crushed.

The bomb… tucked beneath wooden slats of a painted-black box and resting enshrined within felt eaves of an ordinary car trunk; the rear compartment of an inconspicuous red automobile parked astride the neighborhood cafe’s front entrance… bombarded its way into a merciless cascade of permanent impairment at three minutes until noon. Her last sensory intake before pain?

The scent of her mother’s jasmine caress, and the color blue… its vivid display on the rim of a saucer’s round edge; of how it seemed so deep, the color… so still and unmoving.

Never will this child know another bite of foamy bread, another sip of wet liquid… another afternoon spent learning to be human on this earth. For instead of lunchtime at the little corner cafe where her mother takes her on Tuesdays… instead of sitting at a little table and swinging her feet as a mother hands to her tiny pieces of something to eat… instead of chomping and chewing, instead of giggling through the gurgles of alphabet sounds… instead of daydreaming, instead of thinking about the wings of flying things, of why does a hiccup feel so big, of why is a button so hard to fit in the slit, of why do I have a belly with a hole and a finger the perfectly fits… instead of returning to rest her chin atop the curve of a mother’s cloaked shoulder after a bill has been paid and her eyes droop heavy with a nap on the way… instead of childlike moments for child, for this human; instead of learning and cooing… this child is dying. She’s been severed at the base of her spinal column.

Adults are rushing past her. She is buried under rubble, now trapped beneath the abundance of a crumpled building and they do not notice her. Chaos, despair, terror everywhere. Her mother, now dead beside her… can do nothing to help her. She is two years old. And she cannot cry out, in that way that children must, for the squeezing upon her small frame is far too great. The burning, a capsizing agony, the crushing of her spine and internal organs… makes it impossible to speak.

Of course the Angels are there to hold her, to comfort her wordlessly. So too her mother, already transcended… approaches from heaven’s bend of light and gathers up the little soul so beautifully… cradles the life-passing-over so tenderly, with infinite love and goodness as her tiny, grime-lined lids close for the very last time and she transpires… separates from her broken body, is lifted and carried away.

But not I, not We.

We are left screaming. Screaming at one another, screaming about “what is right," “what is wrong.” We scream to be heard. We scream when it hurts. And when we feel our screaming voices cannot capture the attention we crave, the objective we yearn for others to observe… well then, we drop bombs. We hide them inside the trunks of cars parked out front of cafes. And then we scream some more.

When the children of this planet die horribly, in awful, unspeakable ways… when innocents of this planet are oppressed, harmed or hurt in the name of loveless, inequitable concepts… we are all, each and every one of us, responsible. We are responsible when lives end abruptly because no one is listening, because no one is looking, watching. Because no one stops, bends down to help. Because no one halts, reaches out to gather up and hold. We are responsible for one another’s agony. So please, in the name of all that is Good And Wonderful… raise your voice, speak with authority, speak loudly and for all to hear; defend Love, fight for Truth… but so too, please dear friend… look to the other who does not or will not attune, look to whom you hate, look to whomever you think is to blame, to whomever will not listen, to that individual or group who casts aside your loudest cries and whisper, whisper, whisper… whisper to them through your eyes and with your smile, whisper to them through your heart and with your power, whisper to them without words but through feeling… whisper, “I love you most of all.”

Courage, darling friends. Have faith in our ability to rise up. There can be no other way. For the children, for the innocents… we must persevere. And so I say to the Human I would otherwise “HATE…” to forces who bomb, who deploy terror upon neighborhoods, and living rooms, and hospital rooms, and schools… to forces who adhere to embedded, unbending ideologies, to authorities and bureaucracies who shame, torture and murder in the name of an autocratic absolute, in the name of somebody’s version of how all things should go… “Enough, Your Time Is Done.”

And… “My Love Is Bigger Than Your Fear.”

And… “Love Perseveres.”

And then it is for me to watch, look and listen. For those in need can convey their needs better than I can assume. And those in fear causing harm respond to attentiveness, will calm and attune, better than I can force. It is for me to halt, held frozen in my tracks… to bend over, to bend down and gather up that part I’m forgetting to notice, that part I’m forgetting to perceive... that part I’ve discarded, cast aside as worthless. For sometimes it is the loud cry that achieves the results we seek and sometimes it is the listening heart, the open mind and a whisper from within, from depths unseen and a purest of self… from a human trying its best and learning to mend.

Love you so damn much.

Photo by Omid Armin