Straykitty Wrote in again…

Today I watched pornography…different from that in Cathartes Aura’s post.

Age affords me such labels of a large soldier’s hands on a YouTube video, dragging a dark-haired 5-year-old from his father. The boy was screaming. His bare brown feet were running, skimming their way through uniformed giants and weapons so he could reach his father’s back and clutch his clothes.

“Stealing water” was the charge.

Ah, so there was no shiny water tap at his kitchen sink as there is at mine. I turn the knob and take for granted that water will be there. I am ashamed. I have no voice to tell this child how sorry I am that his father was driven to take the water.

So he must be my voice. The Purity and Eloquence of his screams bid me search the memory banks of my mind for a champion who will stand for him. One who will hold out his hand in a caesura and stop the madness, who will tear down the wall and give water to those who thirst.

I know of no champion. I hang my head at humanity’s sad verdict. I watch again the boy’s despair as fingertips of his hands come together, as he searches briefly for a solution, as he once again darts toward the white van that roughly swallows his father.

But he can do nothing. He stands in the dusty road as the land’s history adds his tragedy to its long, bloody tally. He is helpless. He is me. He is all of us.