world, interrupted.

I will never understand

Why I have to worry from miles away

That my little brothers aren’t safe

That my parents might fade away

Like they’ve been left out in the sun too long

Because the world doesn’t wade in darkness

It jumps straight in

Owning up to sin

It sharpens its pins

Like pencils

Until we’ve all got lead poisoning

From all of the overly erased plans we’ve read

And the No. 2 point blank shit we’re fed

I will never understand

Why I answered the phone to a frantic mother

Informing me that my sister’s middle school

Was swarmed by police cars

Reds and blues

Because three young men were planning a mass murder for the Halloween dance

Just by chance

My mother went to pick up her daughter early

Because her instincts were somewhere between full and empty

And the officers pushed her away with no information

Because let’s face it

All they want is some action

even if it means lost futures and bloody basketball courts

 I will never understand

Why 2 weeks later

I picked up the phone to the same frantic mother

Saying that my family had spent the afternoon in a hostile situation

In communication with the police station

When they were supposed to be at the dollar movies

But that everything was ok

Because they

An average family of five minus me

Were just driving down Menaul

Just headed to the mall

For some weekend nonsense

When a man began to make his steering wheel do a dance of death

Each gyration tumbled lanes

Selfish

Because he didn’t care that no one else could hear the music

And as my mom called in a harmless report

They pulled up their station wagon next to his

In a red light exchange

And then turned heads

For a red light exchange

As the man held up a gun

With the barrel staring down my mother

Only the glass tinted windows separating them from each other

Did he know that she has three kids

And a daughter away at school

That our family might be one of the only ones left

Not succumb to divorce statistics or dysfunctionalism

Did he know that his gun staring at my mother

Was the nastiest look he could’ve given

To someone hundreds of miles away

Because he

A selfish asshole

Could’ve ended her life today

He could’ve taken everything from my family

Those three young boys

Could’ve killed my little girl

Because they were too cowardly to ask her to the fucking dance instead

There would’ve been baby doll futures with bullets in their heads

I will never understand

Why we live interrupted

Because no one in this goddamn world can finish their fucking sentence

The only way we can function is by interjecting, interrupting

And ending abruptly

The only way we can survive is to make sure someone else is half alive

Though we know nothing about them

I refuse to let my generation

Continue in the quest to obliterate fullness

I will never understand

Why the world lives in fragments.