“Don’t you speak over my voice!
I will return from the shadows.” –Aurora

This blood-stained land has not known justice in centuries.

When I look to my own future, I feel both powerless and as if all hope is lost.

How can I hope for a place to rest my head, children from my womb, shelter from the elements, and food to keep me alive?

I suffer with all of humanity, and I know that my voice and my pain are but whispers in a whirlwind.

I am not protected from violence when innocent people are killed mercilessly by police. I am not protected from exploitation when it is the very thing that is rewarded. I am not free in a country that has colonized, killed, and still fences in and impoverishes its original inhabitants.

I hesitate to speak on any particular issue, for they are all of equal importance.

As trees scream when they fall and flowers longingly look for bees that are growing ever rarer, so children raise their voices to beg that they might not also fall victim to a system that devalues life.

Where are words in the impulsive web of miscommunication, and for how long should I hold my breath in the name of diplomacy?

The bitten tongue of the powerless becomes the bleeding mouth of the dead, and still wealth is hoarded with callousness.

When I was a very young child, I wished to join in the suffering of the most unfortunate. Allow me to be tortured, I begged a god I no longer believe in, in the place of those who are victimized. Allow me to take their place, I will take it all, so that they might suffer no longer.

These prayers proved as lifeless as the innocents around the world who are punished for living on a planet rich with black gold, too precious to tap without destroying her.

As I descend into the shadows of myself, I try desperately to find remedies, but hope dwindles as the void envelops me. I wonder if I will ever return, or if my descent has any end, crushing me in blackness darker than any light can reach.

Yet others in the same unjust world close their eyes, as if the darkness can be shut out and pretended away. I face the darkness and know it, but even the absence of fear is no promise of victory. Is my refusal to dissociate at all superior to who I once was, the girl who forced a smile to manipulate her own mind?

The curse of understanding is a double-edged sword. One glistening blade says that which is known cannot be again unknown, unless by the soul-insult of self-deception. The other slices with the truth of the ever-expanding unknown.

These things I knew at a young age as well, and I knew that if I lived by the sword, I would also die by it.

It cuts slowly, and I wish it would bring me the release of death, while mourning the death of other innocents. What good is it to mourn for myself, when justice has not touched so many others?

To muster the strength to cry out and hope to be heard is a fallacy.