By Zara Quiter, TIWP Student

I was brave today.
I stood alongside hundreds who were that way, also.
We walked Pearl Street in Boulder
so quietly
but our silence spoke far louder than words could.
Slowly, we flooded the streets.
Surely, we held signs high.
Somberly, or sadly, or sorry,
This was us- this was me saying
we won’t become afraid,
not today, not again.
But we already are,
we just can’t show it.

Secure- I’ve felt secure my whole life.
Danger was always a ways away from me.
But in my veins flows the blood
of survivors
who couldn’t say the same.
Survivors keep standing together
And last week, the 15 injured protesters
survived.

Even in a crowd, 
even with snipers on rooftops,
even with the bomb squad patrolling right next to me,
watching from outside the windows of small shops
I was still itching in place, 
scanning the alleyways and openings through a sea of people.
They wouldn’t part for me,
like the red sea did for Moses.
If my worst fear arrived,
just as the Egyptians nearly did,
it would be inescapable.

I was breathing in a suffocating or inspiring aroma of 
the exhales of those younger and older than me,
wiser and weaker than me,
braver and meaker,
but a hint of desperation was what my nose picked up,
instead of the strong sense of confronting last week’s demons, 
and those from centuries ago.
This little essence was ready to claw through the legs and hips
and shoulders of a community
Just in case need be to escape.

So maybe I wasn’t brave.
Maybe I was terrified of
living in a world where I am terrified.
I can’t fight this because I’m not sure
how to be right,
How to defend myself against an invisible monster
because it’s hard to prove that it’s really there sometimes.
But it is,
It’s pearl white teeth have begun sinking into our flesh once again.
But who am I kidding, it never stopped.
Sure, the gas leaking from its nose have stopped filling chambers
and it’s gaping mouth has stopped scorching our bones
But we’re still burned.

I’m relieved to say that right now,
in this moment,
I have barely been scathed.
Knives have sliced me and created surface-layer wounds,
but I am not yet chipped away by time.
Others, though,
they wear their scars they never asked for as numbers tattooed on wrists,
Magen David jewelry tucked under shirts,
Misguided posters screaming at them,
telling them
YOU DON’T BELONG

And in that crowd of people,
I belonged.
We were united not because of our religion,
not our political beliefs,
but instead because our ears hear echos
of a not too distant past
and the screams of an all-too-possible future.