breathe.

Look around you.

See the people, see the world. A spinning ball of magma coated in a fragile rock crust. On it, we stand. We scream and we kill and we breathe and we hurt.

Somewhere, sirens are ringing in the distance.

We try to ignore the sirens. We smile, we laugh, we shatter behind closed doors. The shield, bronze and gold and endlessly battered, stays intact.

Close your eyes.

Close your eyes and breathe.

1, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Open them and see something different from what you saw before. Calm the beating of your heart, the irregular thump of painful living, and still the shaking of your hands.

Look at the trees. See the ocean, hear the breeze. Hear the sirens off in the distance, a little louder now, but somehow less terrifying than before.

Their warning is solid, ever-present. Your hate will not make it fade.

Look at the people around you. See their beauty. They are sculpted rock and clay breathed life by the embrace of nature, the silent call of hope. They are sometimes smooth, sometimes rough, painted in an endless array of colors that paints the world with identity and meaning.

They are not your enemies. Say that one more time and breathe.

It’s ok.

This is not perfection. That’s ok. We will live, we will march onwards and sing the song of the future in off-key harmony.

Close your eyes and see what has been burned. Fluttering paper and sacred bodies in the physical. Hearts and memories in the metaphorical. Neurons will not repeat their patterns forever, they will fade like the rest of us.

Nothingness is inevitable, and that is why our life is only as beautiful as we make it.

I cannot tell you what to do, and so I won’t. I think you know it very well already.

I love you. I would fall from the skies for you. Take that as you will, wrap it up tight and hold it until the end of your days or throw it into the nearest churning lake.

Look around you and see what you have. See the beauty of this broken world, shattered and torn to pieces time and time again. It stands despite it all.

As the sirens draw near, I ask you:

Will you stand as well?