Frayed Rope Guinevere Reaume

On Loving

Anika Kotapally

Here is what I want you to know: loving you has always been the easiest thing. It’s like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Let me explain. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says that although we cannot see elementary particles, we know they exist because of their spheres of influence. I love you like that. When I reach for the milk the morning, I do it with hands that love you. When I yawn in the night, I do it with a mouth that loves you. And when my neurons fire, sending signals from synapse to synapse, they do it with molecules and atoms and quarks and gluons that love you. Here is how I know: your name comes up on my phone and I smile. I see a Hershey Kiss and I think of you. It’s easy to love you, you know. It feels like what I was made to do. Welcome to our generation, We hope you enjoy this fantastic nation, Kids here stand on a quicksand foundation, And fear their schools are a gunned down station.

When they watch the news near and far, The horrors they witness leave a scar. When they’re in school, their fears on par, They remember their bleeding peers, free and barred.

How many wars are being fought? And how many of them are being taught? Do our leaders know these kids are distraught? For every noise could be a deadly onslaught?

But our nation’s great, it has its perks, We have freedoms and fireworks. But there are red-stained hallways where great danger lurks, Forcing our emotions to be overwrought and overworked

People come here to fulfill their dreams, Or escape their hometown’s deadly screams. They soon learn this country isn’t all that it seems, It ignores and distrusts and divides into teams.

Children across this landscape are torn by division, Hoping for a lawful collaborative solution. Anxiously waiting for a black-robed decision, Wringing withered hands in hope of a life-changing conclusion.

A country is ripe with discrimination: That’s America’s way of “education.” “Land of the free” is a mischaracterization, Of a world that clings to willful exclusion.

But we mustn’t surrender to the dark powers that be, A more perfect union is within reach, you’ll soon see. A time will come when all the “isms” will ride away with the breeze, And through the sizzling warmth of empathy and liberality, We will earnestly redress this fractured morality.

Idealism on Standby

Olivia Chu