I'm Tired

I'm tired of weeping over silent lips.  I'm tired of praying over the bodies of the innocent.  I'm tired of the fruitless discourse that takes place after every random slaughter, which always fades back to the status quo.  Even Reagan was shot down like a dog, and it didn't change a thing.  I'm exhausted, drained, so much so that I can't even find the strength to light a candle for the grieving.  I'm weary of arguing with people whose frontal lobes seem to have been removed by the NRA and replaced with endless loops of nonsense, straw men, red herrings, and slippery slopes.  I'm worn out from living alongside those so fearful of their neighbors that they won't even entertain a reasonable compromise to stop the arbitrary slaughter via weapons of mass destruction that can fit inside a duffle bag or less.   I can't bear to listen again to their tired, old, senseless rejoinder: "Freedom!"  I want to close my eyes, but then I risk a vision of the next set of victims being hauled out of a school, or a mall, or a theater, in so many small body bags.  If this is the price of your freedom, then there is something depraved in the way you've defined it. If this is the price of your freedom, then sacrifice your own children on the altar of your second amendment; don't presume to tell me to hug my own children and be thankful that they weren't butchered--this time.  And don't you dare tell me that this is not a time for politics.  Because if there's a way out of our nation's long obsession with ever more lethal guns and bullets, the only solution is political.