The Orphan Machine

You will remember in some way.

Some way which will persevere.

Persevere through the harsh sands of time.

The way you feel right now.

Remember the gnawing in your gut.

The cracking of your lips.

The incomprehensible weight of your small body.

Remember this smallness.

What it is to cry out amid the gunfire.

What it is to breathe amid the teargas.

What it is to be a heap amid the rubble.

Remember that heap.

Kept warm by your grandfather’s hands.

And your grandmother’s laugh.

And your father’s eyes.

And your mother’s smile.

And the music that your sister used to play.

And the game that your brother used to play.

Kept warm as they all went cold.

Remember what it is to say goodbye.

Or to never get the chance.

To go on without them.

To go on—up alleyways, through corridors, passing the days of your life—waiting for death to find you, too.

You will remember all this.

In some way.

And you will be spurred on.

Spurred on by a faint possibility.

A faint possibility that someday, perhaps a year or eighty into the future, that you or your children or perhaps their children or perhaps their children—that some descendant of the gaunt face you now see when you look into that dark water—will walk this earth on their own land. With reliable water and abundant food and surrounded by smiling people.

And clear skies.

Most importantly, clear skies.

You can scarcely imagine it today.

But it has happened before.

And it will happen then, as it’s happened before, that someone will attempt to take away your clear skies.

And this will be a most fragile moment for you.

Because it may be that there's a man with a bomb or bullet for someone like you.

Or it may just be that there's a man who tells you this is so.

Who believes that his power, his political future, requires convincing you this is so.

And it will be up to you to determine the difference between the two.

It may start out as one and become the other.

May change one moment to the next.

And it will be up to you to determine the difference between the two.

And the difference will be made to look subtle.

The difference may, in fact, be subtle.

But the consequence will be stark.

For the person who made you an orphan was only following orders, too.

And now every order given to you bears this additional weight.

This question.

Of whether you are returning fire from the killing field or expanding the killing field to the next town.

Of whether you are fleeing the gas chamber or releasing the gas.

Because the danger is that you ignore this distinction. And go right on killing.

You survive, yes, but at what cost?

That you once more look in that dark water but do not see the gaunt face you once were.

And instead see the enemy of your youth.

That enemy who took orders like he could do nothing else. Like he was fleeing something.

For whom anything and anyone in the way was just a heap in the rubble.

And this heap in the rubble carries the message of generations past.

The same vague, perhaps vain, whisper:

I hope you’ll be better than we were.

I hope you’ll be better than we were.

I hope you’ll be better than we were.