when a boy who does not matter authors an offense that i will forget before my next birthday, i am the first to reach for language and all its “healing”, quick to find the metaphor and the thesis statement and the climax and the self-empowering conclusion, and look, a poem. then a performance, then a book. there, look. see how i have written my own healing?

but this is so big. this is so big. i am ashamed of my faltering grasp on language. or, rather, i am ashamed of my dependence on language as expression, because these are times that remind us that a word is the most trivial thing. what am i supposed to do here, scribble/type/talk until i land on that one metaphor that neatly sums this all up, and then things will get better? i am out of magic. i have no counterspell for bloodshed. i am the girl that will write a whole book about a papercut, and fall silent in the face of a real wound. where is the poet now? did i exhaust all my poetry on boys who’ve hurt my bright, shiny feelings, to arrive empty-handed when people who could pass for members of my own family are being butchered in droves? i am uncomfortably aware of my own body, always a reminder that it is geography alone that is keeping it a body and not a mangled bit of meat. i am watching it on television. i am spared the smell. geography allows me this. i am drinking good, strong coffee. i have never personally known anyone who has been shot execution-style. geography allows me this. people who, as people, are no different from me, are being poured out of their own bodies in hundreds. children who will never reach my age. mothers younger than i am. i only get to live this long because of the side of the world i wake up on every day. this makes no sense. this is not about me. this is not about geography. this makes no sense. there are no words that do not deeply disrespect the disgusting lack of language for these times. language cannot soak up anything bloodier than a papercut. any larger blood falls too fast to catch and write. but i don’t know what else to do. i don’t know what else to do.