Our side is the side that sits with the maimed and the murdered.
Our side is the side that sits with the peaceful and the beaten,
the prophet and the martyr.
Our side is the side that sits with the people pained by the world
and wrestles with the pain itself.
Grappling with hate and fear: the progenitors of injustice,
we instead pursue the elusive phantom
of true and permanent safety
like a spectral image late each insomniac night
on a routine refrigerator raid
dancing in the corner of the kitchen.
It’s nightly haunt permanent, persistent
eternally elusive, but the sleeplessness itself sticks,
like a licked sucker on tissue paper.
The waking becomes regular and the expectation
of a visitation
outlasts any true arrivals.

That fiction leads to violence. Not the hope
we are called to possess;
we are always unhappy with the gift we were given.

And that fiction is not for our side.

No, we don’t side with the armored, but the defenseless.
Those whose dignity is found in seeking truth and justice
like a child asking for help, they are given a scorpion.

Those pained are our people. Those tricked are our children.

This tribe:

humanity

is our tribe.

Do not watch or pity or rage.
Do not reason or wring hands blurting out

“what can we possibly do?”

but sit with the pained and face the injustice
and do not, whatever you do, flinch.