Four years have passed.
Nine years have passed.
Fourteen years have passed.
Twenty-Nine years have passed.

All these different "anniversaries"; remembering people I used to touch, used to see, used to hear them laugh and speak. Now they're six feet under, kept alive only by memories.

I constantly find myself fighting off that tinge of fear, wondering who among me might be next. Who do I have here today that could be gone tomorrow?

And really, I'm one of the lucky ones.
I haven't had everyone and everything I know and love taken from me with a quake of the earth or a wave of the ocean.
I haven't been stolen from my home and sold to fill some sick propaganda.
I haven't had my race attacked in attempt to wipe them from the face of the earth.
No one has come into my home or school and opened fire.
My house hasn't been burned to the ground for my beliefs.
No, I have more friends above the ground than below it.

I've never even seen a dead body,
Save for the open caskets at funerals.
Swollen faces of friends dressed in their Sunday best.
Bruises on their neck.
Bruises on their face.
Bruises on their arms.
Depending on their fate.

Who knew that their stories would end at
Seventeen Years,
Nineteen Years,
Twenty-Four Years,
Sixty-One Years?
Who knew that their story would finish that day?
Whatever legacy they've built with the time they were given being all that's left to carry on now that they're gone.
And whose responsibility is it to make sure it doesn't die with them?
What does it really matter if it does?

Please know,
Even though the names are countless,
I still pause to remember you.
I still feel the sting of the loss.
It may fade, but it never goes away.

Please know your life is worth it.