Broken People #Poem

We think we know each other,
because it once rained upon us too.
Trouble greets us all,
whether we are five or ninety-two.

We gather across tables,
and throw words out through the air.
We watch them splatter on the wall,
we rarely take a minute to see who sits on every chair.

We walk with wounds wide open,
we try to cover them with strips of ire.
Our eyes are red and pleading,
because our hearts cannot express desire.

We ache for love in childhood,
and carry ghosts of needs never spoken.
We pray to G-d to hear our cries and save us,
because we are all so deeply broken.

We pass our pain along in generations,
and our children shield themselves from ancient hurt.
Instead of speaking, we breathe fire,
some are burned, and others frozen — healing forgotten in the dirt.

We are afraid to speak our souls’ deep yearning,
and so our shoulders carry heavy loads.
While we motion rituals for cleansing,
what lies within is what needs burning.

We cast our sins to water, we remember being slaves;
we beat our chests with fury, we pray just to be brave;
we celebrate the harvests of generations gone,
we wonder why our nation is the chosen one.

Brothers up in arms, and sisters in chains are bound -
children bear the burden of our brokenness,
and mothers cry themselves to sleep
until they are deep within the ground.

Inside of us lay children, who once knew how to laugh,
we cover them in shame and ego,
we blind their eyes from their true path.
We wish those at our tables, more than we could ever be.

If we just maybe listened — to the child in you, in me.
If we just stopped and asked them -
Little one, what is it that you see?
Maybe we’d remember who we are meant to be.

Two broken halves rarely fit back together,
there are always little pieces that lay forgotten on the floor.
Our hopes are drowned in a river of blood,
we try so hard to remember what life was like before.

We go through this life together -
whether by choice or by a hand Divine.
In the end we must remember:
That we are just people -

Broken people trying to be whole.