We pray that we never become accustomed to
seeing the fallen bodies
of our sisters and brothers and lovers
on anyone’s killing floor.
We pray that we get over the feeling that our
entire nation
has moved backward a half century or more
when some still thought they could take a life
because they thought it expendable
before their own ideology.
We pray that people of another strong faith are
not scapegoated
or disparaged with the same sweeping
categories that are ignorant of the likes of the very
lives of those we have so regrettably lost
for we cannot bear to see more suffering.
Now we must get down on our wounded knees and
weep, ululate a sorrow
that words can never capture: why must we
have to go through this
again and again, seeing bright lives snuffed out
like candles set to glow in a sanctuary that
are then suddenly ravaged by a hurricane?
Creator, please wrench out of me any remaining
molecule that does not
fully embrace the dignity of every life
different than my own, with whom
I share your blood-spattered scarred & sacred
ground with all here on earth.
