I’m sitting here scrolling through my feed. I’m seeing some frivolity, but mostly I’m witnessing hatred and anger towards our friends and neighbors. I’m seeing bullying from people I love. I’m seeing passive outrage at the behaviors of our legislature. I’m seeing people spreading more anger and aggression towards others.

Here’s the bottom line. Here’s MY truth.

I don’t care who you love, but that you do. I don’t care who you have “relations” with, that’s not my business. I don’t care if you want to prance around in a mankini while singing the National Anthem off key at an intersection, that’s just funny.

What I do care about is that, in our very neighborhoods, right under our “If I would have known” noses, are children going hungry, being abused, being sexually assaulted. It doesn’t seem to bother people that this happens daily as long as we can keep those damn gays from getting married.

What I do care about is that Domestic Violence has escalated with more reports happening and nobody, except the victims and a chosen few, rushes in with financial support for them because, after all, they chose to stay. After all, they probably asked for it like those Rape victims did.

What I do care about is that people are being encouraged to divide up into camps of “I hate abortions, they’re murder” to “CUT WELFARE because they shouldn’t be having that many kids if they can’t afford them.” How about the fact that Schools will allow abstinence only classes to be taught as sex education. I don’t know about you, but I was a hot blooded teenager in the day and that is not only ignorant but encouraging of bad behavior, see the beginning sentence of this paragraph.

Quit buying into the propaganda of which group is better. Look at the gay community. Look at your church community. Look at the kids in the grocery store or in schools. Look around you and realize that each and every one of these creatures put here for whatever reason, are humans. They are your brothers, your sisters, your mothers, your fathers, your cousins, your uncles, your second cousin three times removed on your mother’s brother’s exes side. Enough.

Humanity is worth it. Humanity is where we reach out to one another in unison. Humanity is where we quit tearing each other up for differences and start embracing it all as a part of the human condition. Bad behavior, such as stealing from the poor, the downtrodden, the ill, the elderly, the addicts, the children, can’t get rewarded any more. But the only way it will cease is if we stand united and declare the words, “NO MORE!” Not in my country. Not in my neighborhoods.

Look around you. See the beauty in the wonderful creations that are walking around, laughing, crying, mad, happy, joyful, hurting and realize they could be you at any given moment in your life. Why would you turn your back on yourself? Why would you not recognize the similarities? How could you look a hungry child in the eye and eat another mass produced heart attack? Please, my beautiful siblings of earth, love one another. Give joyfully. Stop hating that it could be you and make sure that it isn’t for someone else.

It’s been six months since I almost died

When my friend came to visit me

For the first time in my adult life

Someone else colored me in

She painted my toenails bright purple

It made me cry

She was the only one besides my parents

The only one to see me vulnerable

She didn’t blink.

It’s been six months

Every little piggie is naked

But not the one that went to market

Chipped, narrowed, and shortened

That big toe holds on to that one day

When it looked it’s best going to the market

A day I didn’t die

Why is Baba Yaga knocking at my door?

My house is in the city, not deep in the forests floor.

Why carry she that basket?

Is it to gather up my eggs?

And carry them back to her hasty nest that stands on chicken’s legs?

What voice she uses that crackles with age?

Surely she does not think me a sage

If I sit quiet while stirring my stew,

Perhaps my company no more she’ll pursue.

But the smell of her pipe and the creak of my chair,

Tells me she’s settled for a long time right here.

But why has Baba Yaga come when I’m alone?

“If you’d answer your door,dear,” she grated, “I’ve come t’take ya home.”