Threshold

There is a sickness that will not name itself.
It shifts,
changes its face,
learns new words.

It is not color,
not creed,
not the lines on a map.
It moves quietly,
in ways we mistake for truth.

We try to explain it,
try to fix it with words.
Words never heal.
We build monuments to pain
and call it awareness.
We wear wounds like inheritance
and call it history.

I have been hurt
by every shade of hand.
Kindness and cruelty
do not belong to skin.
Power changes tone,
never appetite.
Some use suffering
to justify more suffering.

At what point do we choose to heal?
When does the fire tire us enough
to put down the torch?

Peace requires strength.
Peace is quiet work.
Peace does not surrender.
It is the hardest work
to look at what tried to destroy you
and refuse to become it.

Healing is not forgetting.
It is memory reimagined.
It is love
that has walked through fire
and returned empty-handed
still reaching.

We can end this.
Not through shouting,
not through shame.
Only through the courage
to be whole again.

The miracle,
after everything,
is that we remain.
Still breathing.
Still capable of choosing
something better
than hate.

# ♫Wake up Mr. West!♫