My breath catches in the box of my chest. Whose bread has been stolen? Whose travels have been circumscribes? Whose eye will be taken? How can we make a broken world home again?

I don’t believe that words can answer these questions, not in the way we use them now. Not askance, brushing each other without gripping and engaging. We shout past because we want our pain to be heard, and we confuse that for dialogue.

I wish for a way to share and hear each other’s pain, even that which we may have caused, without confusing it for conversation.

Then, perhaps, in the moans and cries, we can find a melody in the other’s voice that resonates with our own. In that moment, we may be drawn to harmonize. It is more pleasing, after all.

I wonder and dream if aesthetic expressions can break the stalemates of conflict to honor each other’s pain, to humbly see how our own voices and fingers and tools have contributed, and to gently hold and mold our bodies back and beyond.