Focus, Needs, and Failures

We love.
We mourn.
We breathe, eat, sleep and die.
We see each other
with our eyes, with our hands
skin on skin
we let each other in,
in to our individual worlds.
Then some choose to rip it all away.
Some choose suffering and bloodshed.
Some choose to turn their heads
and pretend that the world
is peachy–keen and sunshiny fucking sweet.

Maybe because they have everything they need.
Maybe because the travesties that go on around them
need to be ignored, and not let in through their door.
As if it will all just poof and go away.
BUT IT COMES IN ANYWAY.

Every day, the travesties make an appearance.
Every day, mental illness goes unnoticed,
as if the sick just need to be locked away.
Everyday, people struggle,
on the streets without food to eat,
in their homes, growing cold with no heat
because choices are suppressive,
and money don't grow on fucking trees.

Priorities, they say.
Work hard and pay your bills
while you listen to your babies cry
cause you simply have no time to play.
Hide and seek,
or a twelve hour shift to pay the heat?

Guns don’t kill people,
people kill people,
and we wonder why that is.
It is time to talk,
openly discuss that not everyone is the same,
and yet we are all the same.

We all have the exact same needs.
Water, air, food, love and attention.
We all want to feel comfortable
in our own skin without fear
of societal stigmata and outrage.

We all want to be with the ones we love,
and not be gunned down in the street
for the choices we make that harm no one.
We all want to be who we are,
or who we feel we are meant to be
without judgment and fear.
We all want to protect our children.

We all want to leave some mark on this world,
with variable size and significance.
No one wants to be invisible trash.
No one wants to be viewed as ash
on the sole of another’s feet.
We all want to be treated as people.

We love.
We mourn.
We breathe, eat, sleep and die.
We see each other
with our eyes, with our hands
skin on skin
we let each other in.

It is now time to try to make amends
With what we have, and have not done.
Who have we failed, and why?