When The Whole World Hurts

When the Whole World Hurts

When the whole world hurts,

A mother cries.

She sobs brokenly into the

Shoulder of her thirteen-year-old

Son.

She's wounded.

When the whole world hurts,

The halls are full of laughter.

The hollow kind.

Every smile is holding down

A cry.

No one speaks of it.

When the whole world hurts,

Eyes remain downcast for fear of actually

Feeling something

When they look up.

I glance skyward and feel nothing.

When the whole world hurts,

Texts are left unread, shoes untied

And words unsaid.

But hey--at least the birds are chirping.

It is because they do not know.

Oh, the misery...

When the whole world hurts,

Every one of us goes off

Like a grenade,

One after the other,

Destroying everything in our wake.

We didn't know.

We didn't know.