The Blood Should Be Mine

There is the sky crying outside my window.
There is the wind.
There is the earth, humming along.
There is not a flood to save humanity
no matter how hard I pray for one.

To put faith in action I set out to build an ark.
But the ark fights back.
My materials and tools tell me they don’t belong to me.
The arc of the universe is bending
and it has told the wood, saws, the nails, the metal, the tools in my grasp
that justice means not all of us are builders.

I wake up every day and can’t wash the blood from my hands.
I’m painted red not just by the victims of my tax dollars.
but I’m hemorrhaging as well.

Are we not what we do to each other?

The most powerful empire on earth is carrying out genocides
in my name
with my money.

To commit to killing without consciousness
is to already be dead.
All the blood seeping into the earth is mine.
Should be mine
until the empire falls.

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The line "are we not what we do to each other?" had been banging around my head and I remembered that Ocean Vuong wrote "What have we become to each other if not what we've done to each other?”
I want to give credit to where I was introduced to this idea.