Awakening To Tragedy

Again

Again. 

Morning headlines of mourning. 

A night of violence and loss. 

A dawn that brings no comfort.  

Our national map of tragedy has a new place in which we stick a pin of pain. 

We see once more what happens when instruments of mass death are untethered from any semblance of logical restrictions. 

As always, there are new names to learn of people who will never hear their names again. 

All that life snuffed out in an instant. 

The press will publish old pictures of smiling faces eulogized. 

Motives? As if any will be justified or bring peace to the families now torn apart in bloodshed. 

We repeat and repeat and repeat these tragedies, as if we are powerless to address them. 

But there are answers and ideas that go unheeded.

Our politics don’t allow progress. 

Mass shootings are part of our American identity. 

Meanwhile, a lesser volume of death simmers unremarkably below the surface. 

Lives cut short in tallies of one or two; often the victims know the killers. 

And often the violence is self-inflicted, a permanent end to mental anguish.

Once again, we await more information. 

There will be press conferences, maybe an arrest and even a trial. 

We also know that there will be another such story that will crest upon the headlines. 

Only to disappear except for those who have no choice but to live its consequences daily. 

Again, and again, and again.