Every story is a sad story.
Everything is sad.
Too many tragedies, not enough time.
They pile up on top of one another,
Clamoring for attention.
Bombing tops earthquake tops ****** tops ****—
Burying us under the weight of too many
Bodies, their cold eyes pleading
See me, hear me, remember me but

Every story is a sad story
So no one stays sad very long.
When sadness is ever-present it becomes normal.
So now we don’t even blink, just
Scroll through our newsfeeds thinking:
The world is horrible and what’s for dinner
Simultaneously. When reality is too sad
Sadness becomes a simulation, acted out
On the stage of nightly news broadcasts and
Candelight vigils, as if:
If we all just felt sad enough for long enough
That would solve anything. As if:
If we could compartmentalize our sadness into
New national holidays and moments of silence
We could stop feeling everything so sharply.
But I am running out of room in my closet for charity t-shirts.

Every story is a sad story.
I am starting to become cynical.
One child dead from a drive-by shooting is no longer newsworthy.
Give me more bodies, more pictures
of distraught mothers crying,
More suffering.
We have fought too many wars in too many places to remember
that the bombs in Boston that shut down the entire city
Are an everyday occurrence everywhere else.
Except sometimes they are our bombs.
But rarely are they our children.

Every story is a sad story.
Everything is sad.
I am not sure which is worse: constant sadness
Or no sadness;
Constant tragedy or constant denial.
I am becoming too sad to write anymore.
The world is too horrible.
What’s for dinner?