If Only Just Once

If only, after every terrible thing that happened, the news anchor wouldn’t sigh slightly as she repeated, again, how many people died, where they died and how they died.

If only every bomb and bullet and knife was engraved with the words, “I hate you but I am different from everyone else who looks like me, so please understand, and goodbye.”

If only we actually spoke to each other, instead of posting articles and memes and clever pictures and snide tweets and quotes, designed to make you feel stupid and let you know exactly where you and I stand on the “us” vs “them” debate and as a way to avoid directly confronting the monsters inside each of us.

If only you could run out of sentences and just stop when you didn’t know what everything you felt meant.

If only we responded with love and care and concern and took a moment to breath before we started yelling at each other about how our grief was wrong or where our grief could be better spent or what our grief says about us as people.  

If only we could wrap the anger and hate in blankets until it went out like a fire.

If only, just once, the terrible thing that happened, wasn’t just the start of more terrible things to come.  

If only we’d known each other as children.

If only.