Through the skimming of a worn out book I found a garden.

Full of welcoming people, full of love.

All like me, all so different,

Recognition and understanding is what they thought of.


Among the blooming flowers, where they talked.

Under the buzzing of the trees, where they joked.

Bonding over what connected them,

their uniqueness among the stars.


I rose to find the garden, reading of our history.

Holding the answers in my hands like lilac skies and green earth.


As I read, the rotten leaves crunched under my feet.

Looking up, no person greeted me,

none were there to be found.


Smoke covered the trees, the silence overwhelming.

There was nothing to breath in, but blood and destruction.


Oh, I soon wished for the silence to wrap itself around me again.

Silence is better than spitting hot hate, when the quiet before the storm is all you can hope for.


They held the torches, standing in front of the still burning flowers.

A meaningless crusade for the innocents, a terror fueled by ignorance.


I am not ashamed for running.

I'm not ashamed until night falls,
until I think of all the souls that followed my path and decided to speak up,

a lost cause weighing them down so they could no longer stand upright.


Through the skimming of my book I found a garden.

Once beautiful and peaceful, now torn to shreds.

Full of welcoming people who had not burned alive,

who had not died.