For All Of Us

We heard of darkness
And saw the light fading
Though every one of their faces.

It was too much pain for one room tonight.

It tore at me
And I felt it spilling
Down my cheeks.

I tasted it's bitterness, it's black salty ugliness.

We felt cold steel.
Plastic. And rubber.
The hard grit of blacktop.

And all of it mixed into our blood and into our grief.

We smelled antiseptic,
heard mechanical shrieks,
Trembled in fear.

And saw hopelessness in wrinkled eyelines.

But a look,
A hand on a shoulder,
Reminds us to leave.

Not forever, we'll always come back, and never neglect.

Because self-destruction
Is not the way.
We have to keep flying.

Because it is continuing to reach that keeps us safe and happy and at peace.