His little legs are too small for the chair that they put him in. He is a good boy and he lays his hands in his lap. His world of playing probably was never like mine, like yours. He is young enough to know only the sounds of war and fear. Today they came to him and they tried to kill him. We sent these sounds of war and then we told him there was no place for him. Not in Germany, not in England, not in the US. And we told him that he must die so we can be safe in our couches watching the fighting on our televisions as we eat too much and feel too little. And then we sent the bombs. Now he sits and damnation is crashing around us like bombs too.
He sits in a chair. His eyes are sharp and pierce through the dust that covers his body. He wears a shirt and shorts, but they are dusty too. His small, perfect hands are covered in blood and dust. His beautiful head bleeds down through his silly little boy haircut and he wipes it, he looks at the blood at his hands and then he stares at me and you. I wish my arms could soar a few thousand miles and hold him, but there is no time to hold him for the angels because they have lives to save. So they sit him on the chair and he is silent still and there is nothing now but a broken child and a war to be fought. And we are complacent and we are killers and tell me there’s something like hope in this world but there must be because he is human and he lives and he is beautiful still, in this dust and blood. He is the most beautiful boy in the world, but he is broken now and the world is something different for him forever.
They found him in the rubble of a bombed building. They yell and shout in Arabic. And he sits. He says nothing and his silence is shouting louder than the loudest bomb, the loudest hate filled speech of politicians and men. It pierces the sky and the trees and the hollowed burned buildings and my living room. I cannot look! I cannot look!
And he sits.
And he stares.
His silence is breaking my heart.
Storied By Josh 