Is that all? The whole world, this magic wet blue orb will be remembered as just one big crime scene? After the Y incision, all those sporty, artistic, philosophic fluids drained away; the meat of our intellect, science, curiousity, courageousness; the connective tissues of love, family, hope, benevolence all extracted, examined, weighed, as Maat once did, only now there’s no one left to cross over. No one left to view the body and claim it “Mine,” and grieve. We’ll be documented and printed for eternity, a planet of possibility, now just bloodstain and ash. We silenced ourselves with every gunshot, every act of omerta, each time we shrugged off violence as the norm, or laughed it off because we stopped teaching our young how to touch “animus,” the wonder of it, the holiness of the spirit inside themselves and each other. Decency extinct because we allowed it. Could we all have been just that tired or unable to stand up and not take it anymore?

I will not pray for world peace because those are words with vague concepts and less action, exhalations that feed my houseplants with carbon dioxide, so perhaps not entirely a waste. I could light a candle and burn oxygen, study the flicker and wish that humanity would just stop killing itself. I will shed tears again and feel despair again. But then I will take part of some random act of kindness, or witness one and try to share the news. Again. I will not give up trying because I believe every crime scene should have justice, just like every victim has a name. Let justice be kindness, somehow, and know that you are so much more than a name. I don’t want to believe this beautiful Earth will be just another victim.