I am not OK.
I say it quietly at first,
as though pain becomes impolite
when spoken above a whisper,
as though suffering should apologize
for making the comfortable uncomfortable.
I wake up with smoke in my lungs
from cities I have never visited,
with cries of children
buried beneath buildings
I did not bomb.
But somehow helped pay for.
I have watched genocide become a debate,
war become content,
and human lives reduced to numbers
scrolling between advertisements.
I have carried it quietly,
the way we carry everything now.
I am not OK.
We argue over language
while mothers search through rubble.
We demand proof of suffering
from those still covered in dust.
We ask the starving
to remain patient.
A man dies outside a hospital
because suffering
has a price.
A woman cuts her pills in half.
A child goes hungry
within walking distance
of a grocery store
throwing food away.
A man freezes beneath a building
with twelve empty apartments.
We have cures locked behind prices,
water trapped behind ownership,
and food destroyed
because giving it away
would disturb the market.
Mercy does not profit.
We call this order.
We call this necessary.
We call it everything
except what it is.
I am not OK.
Somewhere, someone has more wealth
than a thousand families
could spend in generations.
They tell the poor
there is not enough.
They buy laws.
They buy truth.
They buy silence.
They own the voices
that tell us who to fear.
They keep us angry at one another
so we never look upward.
They teach the hungry
to blame the hungrier,
and the wounded
to strike the wounded.
They point toward skin,
language,
gender,
faith,
and birthplace.
Then they tell us
we are free.
I am not OK.
We count bodies,
argue over words,
and turn away
before the screaming ends.
We call murder complicated.
We call greed ambition.
We call cruelty necessary.
We try to explain
why the dead had it coming.
We call ourselves civilized.
I am not OK.
I thought this ache was mine.
I thought I was tired.
I thought I was angry.
I thought perhaps
I had simply lost the ability
to live in the world as it is.
I thought I was breaking.
But this pain is older than me,
and now I understand.
I am the hand that reaches out
and the hand that closes the door.
I am the wound
and the weapon.
Because I am part of this.
I have looked away.
I have changed the channel.
I have been grateful
that the screaming
was happening somewhere else.
And that may be
the most human thing about me.
Not love.
Not mercy.
The ability to hear suffering
and continue eating.
I am every hand reaching outward
and every hand that turned away.
I am humanity.
I am not OK.
You are not OK.
We are not OK.
And we should be terrified
of how normal that feels.