Mourning After
The country I now call home is bleeding a senseless and panicked red, diluting its pain in the silence of normal morning routines. I still make my love the coffee I promised before we'd risen and seen the news, before we'd thought of the inevitability of children at fireworks, and how this the attacker knew. She looks so beautiful, eyes heavy and glistening with unspilt tears. Neither of us knowing how to use words, how to understand the reality of atrocity. Beyond the consolations of world leaders, beyond social media reactions, beyond the spin this will be used for, beyond the excuses and explanations, beyond the claims of responsibility and repeating backlash, beyond the reports and crafted articles, beyond the frames of the chosen photographs. The truth is shards of lacerating glass. It is a blood-stained truck and pieces of people. It is a child's excitement dashed ...