This Did Not Begin Here
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| API Photo |
This Did Not Begin Here
The car is quiet now—
too quiet for a place that once carried lullabies,
juice boxes rolling under seats,
a woman rehearsing tomorrow
while traffic breathed around her.
Inside, the world has ruptured.
Red has learned new grammar,
splashed across vinyl and glass,
as if language itself tried to escape her body.
The glove box gapes open—
stuffed bears, rabbits, a unicorn with one glassy eye
spilling out like witnesses
that cannot speak.
They are soaked with innocence.
They are absurdly small
against what has happened.
She was a mother—
which should have been a shield,
which should have been sacred,
but the country no longer recognizes
such words.
This is what the air has taught us:
to mistake fury for strength,
to let cruelty rehearse itself nightly on screens,
to watch leaders snarl and call it courage,
to let a man shout and a nation listen,
until blood feels inevitable,
until mercy feels unpatriotic.
This did not begin in the car.
It began in mouths applauding hate,
in microphones turned up too loud,
in years where rage was dressed as policy
and fear was crowned.
Now she is gone—
for no reason that can survive daylight.
Now the toys lie still,
their stitched smiles finally understanding
what we refused to.
And somewhere, the world keeps driving,
past the wreckage, past the lesson,
pretending this was random—
as if violence just falls from the sky
and not from the weather we chose
to live under.
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