Anguish

I craft my speech.
I wash my hair.
I press my suit.
I stand tall to tell my story in the hope of meaningful change, a change that can save another.
But this is not my truth.

My truth is concealed.
My truth is filled with anguish and terror.
A truth that would be too hard to witness and so would never be heeded.

Today, my night terrors have seeped into my day and I can find no escape.
I am prostrate. I sob.
My truth is upon me.

Anguish and terror over the afterlife… how will I find him?
Anguish and terror over whether Luke is in heaven or hell.

No longer am I afforded the luxury to question the existence of an afterlife, yet today I waver and so…
Anguish and terror that there may be no afterlife, no reunion, no sorrys.

Anguish and terror over keeping my living child safe in a world that has shown that humanity has no value over profit and power.

In a world that postures, denies, shifts accountability and dilutes responsibility…
In a world that delays and drags glacial legislation from taking the gauntlet and finding for common sense and humanity over profit…
How can we feel safe?

How little we know about the sobbing of the Mothers that echoes through the vast emptiness of empathetic wastelands bereft of meaningful or lasting change, deaf to their agony because it is too hard to bear witness.

There is a madness that comes with child death.
A madness that we can not show, because in this true state we will be dismissed, and will lose the last threads of hope for our call for change.

Imagine the millions of Mothers with children either dead or in a living hell, descending on the halls of power, prostrate, sobbing, showing their truths behind the wake of the opioid crisis.
Would they hear us?

I don my suit.
I wipe my tears.
I deliver my perfectly crafted speech.

Anguish by August Friedrich Schenck