Open eyes. Open window.
The birds chirp.
Someone, somewhere, cuts their grass.
A child plays. Laughter.

Open book.
Yesterday, one about love.
Today, a dystopian future where
people shroud in their house with fear.
Sound familiar?

Check my phone.
A text about linguistics.
How to pronounce an “R”
for a language I’ll never know.
Useful information for a different time.

Open the news.
100,000 dead.
Over 40 times as many from Pearl Harbor.
Over 33 times as many as 9/11.
Both horrible tragedies from before your time.
Both with more emotion connected in your brain.
I wonder if I’ve forgotten how to feel.

Another article.
Another man dead.
Another targeted for bird watching.
Another day I long for change.
To do: check your stigmas.
Don’t be like them.
Be human.
Be real.

Open book. Flip page.
Character reminds me of a simpler time.
High school. Friendship.
To do: text friends.
Maybe I’ll see them again someday.

Close book.
Tired of reading a troubled world
too similar to my own.

What else to do?
Take pictures?
This is not a time worth remembering.
Watch videos?
There isn’t another world to escape to.
Check news.
Tear gas. Moment of silence.
I can still feel. Wipe tear.

I’m done.
I’m done with the death.
I’m done with the destruction.
I’m sick of guns, and wars, and sickness, and isms.
I’m done hoping the world will change;
the world will be better.
Because it did, and it’s not.

Where will our world be in five years?
In ten?
Tomorrow?
Do I even want to know?
Because every time I take a step closer to believing
that we are good,
realty piles on top of me.
I see everything I have to privilege to ignore.
I see it all at once.

I love humans.
I love our differences; I love our flaws.
I love that we can talk to anyone in the world,
at a push of a button,
but I also hate it at the same time.
On days like today,
I don’t want to know what’s happening.
I want to stay in my bubble,
away from all the bad.

Open my book and pretend it’s all there is.
The darkness is just fiction.
Hope that one day, that will be true.