What We Remember, What We Forget

Did you know, during the Civil Rights Movement,
some Black folks said, don’t bring that trouble here?
They’d seen the klan ride,
knew there was no army, no law,
to shield them from fire—
just the memory of lynchings,
ash from burned churches clinging to their prayers.

Sometimes, courage was not asking for change,
but surviving another night.

Still, Martin marched.
Medgar, Malcolm, Fred Hampton—names written in blood,
pushing for humanity while others hid,
knowing about East St. Louis, Rosewood, Black Wall Street,
the stories textbooks would one day try to erase.

So when the Palestinian woman cries,
I am not Hamas,
when another mother says she wishes this rain of fire
had never come,
I think of the mothers who watched their children
dragged from bed,
of a people once starved, gassed,
carted off to die because the world decided
their children did not belong to all of us.

I hope for a heart to soften.
I hope someone, somewhere,
remembers how it feels to lose everything
and refuses to let it happen again.

But it has not happened.

Palestinians are being killed as they run,
as they beg for mercy,
as they clutch their children,
hoping the silence of the dead will scream
louder than their mother’s voice
and stop the next bomb.

This is not defense.
Defense is not hunting the unarmed,
not shooting the running,
not starving the trapped.

Even the Mob won’t kill women and children.

I am not saying a country cannot defend itself,
but defense means your enemy is fighting,
not fleeing,
not praying for someone to see their humanity
before the last breath leaves their child’s body.

Maybe one day, someone will remember
that all the children in the world belong to us,
and the silence will finally be enough to save
at least one body,
one baby,
from the fire.