I want to call all my kids
Tell them I love them
Tell them to drive safe
Wear their seatbelt
And don’t go sit in a theater,
Walk on a sidewalk,
Or go to school.
It is too dangerous
to ride your bike
walk the streets of Times Square
or go to a music festival
held outdoors.
I want to tell them
Not to attend church
Not to invite a stranger
Into your prayer meeting
because he might be a terrorist
a delusional white supremacist
or someone who was in the military
(which doesn’t seem to bode well
for your mental health these days).
I want to tell them
to be safe, always,
Because if I had to go through
what hundreds of other parents are going through right now,
I don’t know how I would survive.
I want to tell the NRA
to go hide in a cave somewhere
and take all their guns with them
because no one needs any kind of gun
that can take 26 lives in 15 seconds
because they were angry at the world that day,
And the person who shot back
Couldn’t fire fast enough
to save them.
No one could.
And I want to write my Congressmen and women
to demand gun control
But I feel they are already bought out
Lock stock and barrel
and nothing will change.
I do it anyway
but it’s getting a little difficult to breathe in here
a little challenging to hope.
Why can’t we love each other?
Where does this hate come from?
“Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust?
That no one should exalt himself over the other.”*
—cfblack 11-06-2017
*Writings of Baha’u’llah
Doctor Grandma 