Lines
Every time we say never again, it happens again.
Artwork By : Shain Parwiz
There are lines.
Ones that should not be crossed.
Yet it’s become a norm.
Heads I win.
Tails I lose.
Parents killing children,
posting grief for sympathy.
Seven months old,
taken away,
never to return.
Heads I win.
Tails you lose.
Soldiers detain two kids,
chests puffed,
weapons raised.
They were just walking.
Worship?
Institutions of education?
All fair game
Bullet riddled, blood soaked
Forever changed.
Heads I win.
Tails you lose.
What’s left of humanity
when bad-faith actors
get medals for murder,
and the guilty find redemption
in the online world ?
Isolated? No.
Insulated.
Boundaries trampled,
ethics discarded.
Fingers scroll through feeds.
Skipping atrocities for dopamine.
How can death
still make you swipe?
A school collapses in Asia,
someone’s learning dance moves.
Attention spans of goldfish,
blind to suffering.
Heads we lose.
Tails we lose.
A horrible orange man,
drunk on power,
aligns with a maniac
who attacks flotillas of aid.
Don’t speak about it.
You’ll lose followers.
You’ll be seen as “unfavorable.”
That’s the excuse….
to stay desensitized.
They cross that line
more often than
kids skipping rope.
There’s always a grift.
There’s always a payday.
I refuse the tightrope.
If offense is the cost…
so be it.
The conclusion’s foregone.
I cross anyway.
And I take my time with it.
No happy ending.
None that I can see.
You process one tragedy…
ten more appear,
like whack-a-mole with bodies.
They mourn the speaker,
forget his speeches.
Empathy misplaced.
Profit preserved.
This isn’t about sides.
It’s about the line
chosen to be erased.
With their positions of power
And obtuse views
They’ll smile, fangs exposed,
And scream:
Heads I win.
Tails you lose.
And all of us pay the price.
Author’s Note:
I started this piece in the wake of Baby Emmanuel Haro case.
Atrocities never relent; they just change form, feed, and face.
You tell yourself this time will be different.
Then the footage surfaces.
And the world scrolls past another body.
This had to be said,
and it will be the next spoken-word piece I release.
-Shain
This is brutal and necessary. You force us to confront what we scroll past, reminding us that silence and inaction are part of the cost. Thank you for holding up the mirror.✨
This world is not easy to live in. I thank God for my faith and my belief that true justice will await each one of us. It’s the only way I can keep putting one foot in front of the other. Great piece Shain! 💕