I am condemned by strangers.

They devote an entire day

and a lifetime

to yelling obscenities at strangers

for loving deeply and fully

in a way their book has not taught.

Children are still in cages.

No different than last year

or hundreds before.

They seem too distracted by the yelling

here and everywhere else

to remember to listen.

I wish most days that love was louder,

like the cry we all let out at birth.

The people who “care about the living,”

are picking the wrong battles.

I wish most days we could knock down

all of our walls to remember

the parts of their book worth remembering.

I’m not asking anyone

to walk on water

but we need

a loving

fucking

screaming

miracle.

How many times must we watch

shaking hands fling up to praise

their fragile broken life

and pray to a fragile broken god

because one man

misread one line

and drew another.

It has been so easy to be so angry

and then numb

to the pain of this world.

I do not wish to be

a hard,

cold,

steel woman

looking too much

like the flinch

of a white mans

triggered

trigger

finger.

I pray to that fucking book

and everything else

to be soft, to be warm

to be loved, and loving.

I pray to leave this world,

whenever… however I do,

screaming.