Shocking

Do you remember

When mass shootings were

Shocking?

Do you remember

When being able to list

Columbine

Sandy Hook

An Orlando night club

Was gut-wrenching?

If I say K Street in Sacramento,

Do we even react?

If I say NYC subway

Do you know what I’m talking about?
Our media is filled with

Wars in other countries

(As it should be)

And a single moment of

Hollywood-on-Hollywood violence

(Whether it should be or not)

And yet people are

Hurt

Dying

With wars on our streets

In our own country;

Wars about

Racism

And classism

And domestic violence

And hating how people love.

There was a time when mass violence

Could render a nation somberly silent.

Today we are silent

For not noticing anything happened.

In 2022

When we have marched for lives

And marched against senseless death–

Why now

Should mass violence

Go unremarked?

These

Are

PEOPLE.

People of whose deaths I would not know

If I didn’t have a friend near them

Marking themselves safe on social media.

Why aren’t we all screaming?

Not in fear.

In abject horror.

In anger.

In utter outrage

That our fellow humans

Would ever treat our fellow humans

With such inhumanity?

And if we aren't,

If we can’t,

If our outrage is drained

And our voices are silenced

Or turned to other things

Because we cannot bear the horrors of life,

Then what are we,

If not also drained

Of our own humanity?

To lose our humanity

To lose our love

To lose our care

Compassion shot out

By masses of mass murderers

To lose who we are–

That is truly shocking.

On April 3, 2022, there was a mass shooting on K Street in Sacramento, California. Instead of my social media being filled with thoughts, prayers, outrage, etc., I only learned about it because a single friend who lives in the greater Sacramento area marked themselves as "safe" on Facebook. I did later start seeing some things about it, but it wasn't a tidal wave of uproar about it as happened with so many similar incidents, it was a trickle. Sadness and sorrow at yet another mass shooting. And that sparked something in me, my own tidal wave of grief that we could become so tired of fighting for our fellow humans that we would quietly weep over something that should be causing us to demand change, even if we don't all agree on what form that change should take.