The sky was bright blue as it often is somehow when somewhere someway death interrupts:
The shock of someplace something awful but not here but yes, here:
I feel it pulsing just under my skin if I close my eyes because anyway the sky is too bright the sun is too hot for spring and
I feel strangely light and empty like the blood is draining from me too but from where will my strength come where
can I look?
To the hills?
To the hill country where hearts and souls are gutted because beds are empty tonight and forever?
It’s a landscape I don’t know, but easily could. Because we said it every day in school back when guns didn’t follow us
there:
One nation under god.
Now a nation staggering under hate and death. Under desks under bullets everywhere.
Ducking hiding crying calling parents
if I don’t make it goodbye.
More calls more bullets than we can count.
Death count.
Life count.
A foreign land that’s right here, my country, my lawless lifelorn country that I want to grab by the neck and wring a pulse back out of
Beating
Saying
Screaming
Weeping
Life
Life
Life
—-Rabbi Audrey Marcus Berkman