#so. you know. in case a full blown genocide with tacit support from the u.n. wasn't enough to make you want to never know anything again

[yourdailyjormy]

Tourniquet

How do you stem the bleeding

When the wound is all there is?

I close my eyes

I try not to think too hard

about the flattened rubble

and the bloodstained streets

and the crowded camps and small boats

and the magnitude of suffering

.

When a wound can't be stemmed

When the poison can't be washed out

and the thought that there are people

who can look a hundred thousand corpses in the eye

and call it defence

and argue that they started it

What can you do

With your own problems?

.

Go numb

Find a reason that it's not your blood

And remember that it's a rule of triage

To fix your own bandages first;

Even if the wound isn't as bad

You can't heal others if you're passing out.

.

I cannot save Sudan

Or Palestine, or Lebanon,

Or the fleeing fearful folk washed ashore,

Or even one man frozen outside the Tesco's;

I cannot change the world.

I can only dress my own wounds

Before I bleed to death -

- slowly, yes, in dribs and drabs

and without the drama of disaster

but a knife is still a weapon

even if it's not a mortar shell -

There is nothing I can do for others' wounds

If I do not tend my own.

.

So I will find where my hope gives way to gaping wreckage

And where my energy bleeds out into the ground.

I will triage.

I will spare myself.

I will close my eyes to what I cannot change

And cut off the wounded limbs of humanity

With a tight ligature of What more can I say?

Wrapping empathy in a much-needed tourniquet

Because I am bleeding out.

.

And I will try not to think

About how many people have no tourniquets left.

.

And I will try not to think

How much of my pain I can cordon off

To stop the bleeding

Before the tourniquet has amputated all of me

And strangled around my heart.