by Cody Wilson
What world is this
to bring a child into?
There have been 565 mass shootings
in the United States this year.
More shootings than days.
The longest we lasted
without one was 18 days.
There is nothing new under the sun.
What constitutes a mass shooting
is 4 bodies.
Imagine my family—the ones
you know, the mass of us ash.
There is nothing new under the sun.
I forsake my son at the school gate.
I worry about the kind of holes
bullets make.
What kind of God
would wholly let us
be holed. In. Like the hole
I burn in my head
with the ember of every news story
that skims across my eyes.
I am screened with fears
of living and dying and living and—
there is nothing new under
the sun.
Of the victims of war,
the worst and most likely
to suffer are children.
More than 6000 children
have been killed
in Gaza since October.
There is nothing new under the sun.
I see this on the muted screen
as I lay on the ground,
the heaviest I can,
lifting my son
into laughter. I lift him but
I cannot lift myself most days.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Oh my God. The crises—
climate // border // war // poverty // opioids // inequality //
health // displacement // hunger // mental health //
Crises cries! We cry. Jesus wept.
Then brought Lazarus back—
but for too many beloveds to name,
there is no coming back.
There is no coming back from
the feeling you can do nothing
and the thought of eternity
still makes me fear more
than the thought of not
existing before or after
this life I was brought into.
We didn’t ask to be here.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Oh my god,
Why have you forsaken me?
There is plastic in our hearts.
It has broken the brain
barrier. Scientists predict
that over 20% of the world
will be uninhabitable by 2050.
There is nothing new under the sun.
What kind of world
did you bring your child into?
“The godly thing to do
is kill you,” says a man
to another in Israel
The godly thing is to build a wall
Though I break my spirit
against each new wall
I build against him.
The world is on fire and I’m watching a TV show about it.
There is nothing new under the sun.
“I would start trembling
my hands would tremble and start to hurt”
says a child about the war. About the water.
About there was none.
About his mother / about she wasn’t /
about—we call it conflict.
I pick my son up from school
and he is safe again
but there is a backpack
abandoned in the street somewhere.
There is nothing new under the sun.
For everything there is a season…
a time to be born, and a time to die...
…a time to tear, and a time to sew…
a time for love, and a time for hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace
There is nothing new under the sun.
"I saw murdered babies. I saw murdered
children. I saw mothers and children murdered together,”
says a man in Israel.
Then God said, “take your son, your only son,
whom you love—Isaac. Sacrifice him
to me as a burnt offering.”
Just kidding!
There is nothing new under the sun.
Nothing new but the son.
That same way I felt
when I held for the first time my own.
In bad dreams, I outlive him
In the bad world that I brought him into
which maybe he can change, but for now he still
draws on his face with marker
and I am glad. I see what I have co-created
and it is good. I am still learning to love
what every second gets closer to ending.
I am glad. I am thankful.
Thank you
for letting me shoulder the weight
of my children as I raise them
to see the sunset
over the fence
of my backyard.
Thank you for shouldering my weight.
Thank you for
the nurse who said within a heartbeat
I would go back
to the war. To the children.
Thank you for every little pang
which makes us more aware of our bodies,
however fleeting they might be.
Thank you to the heart
not just as a metaphor
but its kind beating,
for the way it pumps millions of cells
in this heaving, grieving, losing, loving
machine of our bodies,
which yes, are made
of the same atoms as the stars.
Thank you for the stars
and how we still see their light
long after they die.
Thank you that there is nothing
new normal. We’ve been here before.
It’s familiar.
What has been done will be done again.
So let’s do it again—let us shoulder
the weight of this season of waiting
and give thanks in our grieving
that it won’t last long.