Sixty-six dead in the market. Nine more killed at school. Sixteen more dead in line for bread, and in each location roses bloomed.
200 roses in the Jerusalem of Europe, for more than thirty years they remain. Every bloody crack and seam filled forever painted red, to remember who was lost and what was seen.
Imagine if we did the same? For every senseless murder? Filled the holes with red where friends and neighbors fell?
Fill the holes in Columbine and Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Florida State? Fill the holes where children learn and congregate- for concerts, to buy groceries, and to pray.
Red roses in Mother Emmanuel, and roses in the French Quarter, roses where Pulse Nightclub proudly stood.
Roses in Uvalde where the Texas rose is yellow, but for this exception blooming pink and crimson. Roses in the hallways, and roses in the classrooms.
Roses at the bank, now 5 benches in my hometown.
The bank destroyed and palm trees stand instead.
Roses red as licorice at the theater in Aurora, and roses laid in Buffalo, New York.
You could walk amongst the roses testing cantaloupes for ripeness, and between slot machines along the Vegas Strip.
So many roses we could have! We could paint the nation red, but instead we plow them under and do nothing, like the dead.
Who wants to remember, when the next is ’round the corner?
Maybe while changing oil, or lining up to vote.
In Sarajevo roses bloom, and the people live amongst them, going about the humdrum chores of living. Do they see them anymore? Do the young ones even know?
Are they teaching horticulture in the schools? You must use a strong epoxy, maybe something like a resin, scrape it clean and let it dry without a touch.
But here we know so little of the business of the botanist, one might say that all our thumbs are brown.
But our thumbs are truly red, and as we count the dead, we hide our bloody hands behind our backs.
Because nothing can be done, and it’s just the way things are, and it’s better to forget than do things hard.
Juancho