Massacre at Sandy Hook

Again the earth runs red with blood—the type that stains—the blood of innocents.  It’s an old story frightfully re-imagined: the helpless slain by an offender whom they did nothing to offend—too innocent to have grasped the depravity which extinguished life; too young to have considered a future they will never know.

Bleeding hearts cry out for comfort where none exists, just as troubled minds cry out for explanations and motives that remain elusive.  For who among us can truly comprehend the inner life of another man?

I hear the toll of bells and, recalling the wisdom of Donne, know better than to send for whom they toll.  O, that our world could permit such atrocities!  That children whose flames burn so brightly could be so callously extinguished, while those poor souls who birthed them are left behind to suffer wounds more painful than those that claim life—wounds which will never heal, but will throb and smart until those on whom they’ve been inflicted breathe their last and, mutilated from within, are laid to eternal rest beside the bodies of their darling little ones.

And what of the perpetrator?  Is not he my brother, also?  Readily we reach for stones with these soiled hands of ours, convinced of our innocence, and yet—did not we play some part in creating a world in which demons are free to roam?  If only someone would answer our cries for help—wretched creatures that we are.

Peter Wood is an MS-1 who enjoys reading and writing in his spare time.