What is a Life to You?

What is a life to you?

Do you wake up to love

imagine a future with someone?

A wife or a husband,

a child or ten?

An exaggeration,

but love is different to everyone.

Do you have a cat or a dog,

that you carefully

care for?

Who’s life you would

ultimately kill for?

What is a life to you?

Alarm clocks and paychecks

or midnight snacks

and twenty cups of coffee?

A pack of cigarettes

you hide in your glove compartment?

Or that one note

in a song you love?

The verse in a poem you read

a decade ago that you can’t shake

Or even the 9am radio talk show

that you listen to every day?

Is it the silent onward tick of a clock?

An assurance that time goes on?

What if the soothing

and somewhat irritating

guiding force of a grandfather clock,

the chiming

and the tick and the tock

morphed into something

Something you can’t quite place

but angry

in a not so far away place?

What is a life to you?

Cold metal shifting beneath

even colder hands?

Anger pounding and sirens blaring?

What is a life to you?

Smiles through stupid jokes,

and the smell of rain after a drought?

Familiar eyes gazing into yours

holding something you couldn’t explain

but somehow makes your heart beat faster?

Is it blaring music in a concert hall that

takes you away from your pain

and let’s you escape?

Or is it the careful sounds

of chalk on a chalkboard

carving out your day?

Is it soft skin beneath your fingertips

tracking a course you take every night

and soft breaths and careful grins?

Maybe it’s a familiar scent

wafting in through the vents

like cookies or pie

or home

Is it dreams of a future

where you are all you know you can be?

Success and power and money

but not overrun by greed?

is it safety?

What is a life to you?

Is

it safety?

Is it knowing that when you close your eyes

you’ll wake up

and nobody will have died?

Is it holding a hand through the night,

staring up at the ceiling

wondering

when and how and why?

Is it the feel of grass beneath your feet?

Or rain on your skin?

Is it the sound of thunder striking,

far off but near enough

to remind you you’re alive?

Is it freedom?

What is a life to you?

That you can look up at the sky

and watch as the flag falls

to half mast

surrendering to another

massacre?

Is that life?

Is that freedom?

Is life the calculated draw

of a machine

pulling at the strings

of what holds us together?

What is a life to you?

Is it getting a call just after two

when the police have arrived

and the ambulances still drive

and the sirens still blare

and the blood still pools on the sidewalk

or the dance floor

or the stage

or the school

where someone you love

someone you live for

has fallen

and you don’t know

if they’ll get up?

What is a life to you?

A machine that can’t love

but can only take

or a person

who loves

who breathes

What is a life to you?

A mascot or a color

Is it blue?

Is it red?

Is it a debate you make

Is it proclamations of your rights

and the ignorance of their deaths?

What is a life to you?

Is it forgetting their touch?

Is it turning on the news

and feeling something clutch

at the very core of you

and ripping at all you are

because this is the when

this is the how

But there’s no Why.

Why?

Why weren’t you there?

Why couldn’t you help?

Why wasn’t your side arm

there to catch the bullets

that someone else side arm

shot out at the one you

would give you life for?

There is no Why.

What is a life to you?

Is it an empty gaze

in a bloodied field

that once was a school

that once was a sancutary

that once was a home

or a church

What is a life to you?

Is it the cold metal clutched to your side

when you jump out of the passenger side

of you friends car

and rush in

because this was the one place

the one thing

that wouldn’t happen to you?

You had your protection.

But what use was it?

Was it worth a life to you?

For you to have your safety �"

for them to have their weapon?

You don’t see a weapon.

You see a light in a tunnel that just gets darker

but do you see why the light fades

do you see what you’re losing?

What is a life to you?

Is it the careful beeping of a heart monitor

counting down seconds

overpowering the clock in your brain

What is a life to you?

Is it years dwindling to hours

to minutes to �"

“We did all we could do”?

What is a life to you?

Is it this?

Is there anything you could do?

There was.

There is.

Lives lost, and nothing gained.

No protection, and no groundwork laid.

“It’s a shame,” thats what they’ll say.

“There’s nothing we could do.”

But we both know there’s another way.

What is a life to you?

Strangers dying that’s one thing

But imagine your love being where they were

imagine a shooter atop a tower

where your side arm did nothing

but permit them the opportunity

to aim down with a cold gaze

cold like the metal against your waist

cold like the machines keeping them alive

like the morgue

and the blood on the ground miles away

cold like the nights

when you lie

staring up at the ceiling

wondering

when and how and why