sigh
They are all so…
Cute
Lost between loves
What makes a human
Jettison a cat?
Their faces so lovable
How can we
Let them go?
then
Keep their flat glossy
Images so
Egyptian gods (of them)
Emblazoned on our internet
Flat ghosts
Of souls we
Refuse to keep.
when discussing
Atrocity
I find that it is best to begin
With scenes (at least a single scene)
Of domestic tranquility–
A sister reads a children’s story to her little brothers who have memorized the words. They punctuate the story with lines of dialogue and laughter…
Because
If you do not see them–real
Alive
Vivid
Indelible
Then you won’t understand the tragedy when they go missing
Completely legally, of course
The voices in support of holocaust of one sort or another are always quick to point out
Everything they did to destroy the wee ones was completely legal
–The stripping of their rights
–The dehumanizing monikers
–The methodical pillaging of their history, family, identity
–The medical framing of their naked deaths
–The sanitized commodity of their skin, blood, stems, and cells
–The clinics where they do their tinkering
Piecemeal
Tiny pieces
–All government sanctioned
–Legal to trade in and cultivate small
Parts
Tell me again
How
Piles of skin and hair and blood
Can be so..
Bought and sold.
Where was the conference room? In what hotel?
They served a light
Lunch/over the topic
How to separate the spine of a…
living soul
The way a man would gut a fish
It is important to walk a mile in a person’s shoes. In some cases, perhaps most, the last mile is the hardest.
So you do. Because if you think your personal bias plus a handful of hours is enough, you have not thought about the…
Debilitating disease (she died from)
Her reputation as a bulldog defense lawyer.
Attorney client privilege.
I don’t expect Sarah to cover this, but I do expect it of us–armchair detectives all–
What would you do if he had told you he had killed that “b….” in cold blood?
What would you do if you knew he had planned it? Shaped it. Drawn in his accomplice?
Smoked weed after it was done?
Would you have put him on the stand? Would you have pushed for a plea bargain? Produced an alibi witness to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the jurors?
Perhaps. Perhaps if you were the lawyer he told his privileged truth to…you would have…
Would ya?
Perhaps, just perhaps both his attorney and his ex-girlfriend took the same dreadful truth to their graves, one shallow, one deep.
Who killed Hae Min Lee. Who?
The sky was very blue in Beaver, PA on November 13th, 1998. There was a cop car parked down the block. I looked at it and wondered–did they put it there for me?
Had I planned a run to Canada I would have take off already.
People from our church came. Reporters came. They gathered around us in our pain.
Then the caseworker came.
I will never forget what happened between the house and my last glimpse of you in that car, but even after 16 years I don’t want to write it down.
Still too painful.
All of it, too painful.
When I lost you
I knew you were never really mine
You have your mother’s face
Your father’s hair
Eyes all your own
For years I marked the days
Knew when your birthday came and went
Saw your face in every crowd
Missed you and wished you well
Because that is what love does
It never stops beating
Down every door for you
I saw every fairy tale through a different lens
Knowing how easy it could be
Excuse me, was…
For Rumpelstiltskin to steal a child
And teach her a world of untrue stories
But in real life
Truth
The Truth
Always sets us free
I know that body
Of water
So big, so crashingly big
You would divide it up into
Parts, continents, islands
A string of pearls or teeth
Would be too small for a satellite
You can’t see the Great Wall from space
…or the Lido Hotel…so close to the
Airport I used to know
The “Snooker” room there
We were still young then and thought the term amusing
They had a post office.
I remember now
Somehow more civilized than the real one?
Where I once received the scrolls from him
And sent off the books–a New Testament? A dictionary
You wanted me to speak to you in English on that endless journey
As the satellite technician listened warily
Never letting on he understood
The families will grieve
For their children
First missing
Now gone
300 hundred objects
Floating across an endless
Endless sea.
Fifteen years ago today I lost my baby.
Changed the world.
Changed me.
God remained
Unchanged
I do not like horror movies for one simple reason: violence and pain is not entertaining.
There is too much real horror in the world for us to get our jollies from “fake” horror.
So I was intrigued when I read about The Conjuring, no real violence? Only a modicum of bloodshed? Has a man known for his scarifying horror porn turned a corner in making a scary movie with old-school methods instead of new-school exploitation?
Perhaps. But I don’t usually stray into movie review just for kicks.
The reviewer I read pointed out that most of us just say–why doesn’t the family move? That is the second time this week someone has posed that question in connection with horror. The first time the question was in response to the 7 deadliest neighborhoods in the US. A friend asked–why don’t they just move?
There is no reason why a fictional family beset by camera-funded haunts could not up and move except the placement of the crafts services table.
In real life however, the answer is right up front–poverty. People stay because they are too poor to move. The neighborhoods stay dangerous because poverty does not fund decent law enforcement.
Poverty begets crime, neglect, and the exploitation of our most vulnerable citizens.
When the money is gone so is the safety. We live in a dangerously impoverish country–little girls left in trash bins and garbage bags. Grown women murdered by a sex offender who stalked their neighborhood…then left them curled in trash bags. Kidnapping and harm.
The value of human life is plummeting in our country. Law enforcement does not keep us all safe–especially in the poorest places.
Ironic. We all know this movie will gross millions, hundreds of millions, all the while the gleaming cities of America go bankrupt, and more children die in our haunted streets.
Where could we move to be safe?
A few days ago I received an email from a family member–normal right?
I could tell this person’s email account had been hijacked because s/he and I do not have a family relationship anymore. S/he joined the ranks of friends and family who were so chagrined by me that the relationship could not be repaired.
Close relations of crime victims often inflict terrible secondary wounds.
They are ashamed of me and my story and to preserve their “normal” life they do really wretched things.
Friends can be equally painful. They stop being friends, shrinking quietly into the shadows, not calling, not inviting our family to events. That familiar blanched look of fear…silence…gone….
I had a friend who was a sister to me. Unlike many she stuck with me through the shock, grief, and early period of survival, but she deeply disapproved of my public efforts to draw attention to what happened to us. Too public…to noisy…
She is gone. It hurts.
The list gets longer and more erratic after that–people who make their money from shepherding other people–gone or worse–cruel.
You start to rethink people. The world seems increasingly lonely.
Yesterday the Christian Post asked if it’s readers experienced loneliness. A bunch vehemently denied it–
Never! I have God! Ditto!!! Double that!
But of course I have to be the lone dissenter. I said,
Jesus experienced loneliness, why shouldn’t I?
That is my motto and I am sticking to it. But I won’t lie to you–I wish I had kept my mouth shut for my children.
They had a shot at “normal,” if it weren’t for my big mouth.
The truth will set us free…no one said it would make us look normal.
Normal is the lie.
For all of us…not just mouthy me.
When I mull over the latest horrendous story of a child being exploited or murdered I think–somewhere in the multiverse there is a version of me who writes a blog on great chili recipes.
I hate this beat.
But I write about it because I know that exploited children are forgotten, marginalized, stigmatized, and dismissed.
How do I know? Because my children are crime victims. It has been a lonely road for all of us. We have lost family and friends. People react with distance at best. I am not going to catalog “at worst.”
But here is the thing–my kids–the crime victims are vibrant, intelligent, compassionate, wise beyond their years.
I write for them in belief that many other children who have been victimized deserve to heal with dignity.
They deserve a voice.
If you say you are “against child abuse” but then sideline, stigmatize, and ignore actual victims you drive home a message of silence, oppression, and injustice that indeed speaks louder than words.
It all comes down to who you actually invite to your party. That is the test of justice. Ironically it is also the measure of love.
Carrying Light 