Taken

This is an elegy written to Abdel Hameed al-Youssef who lost his 9-month old twins and wife in a chemical weapons attack in northern Syria.

Taken

They were taken from me.

Just as a bird takes sweet nectar from a flower,

They were stolen from me.

Like a child steals candy from their mom’s purse,

They were removed from me.

The same way you’d remove a weed from the ground,

Their lives were plucked from me.

Like how a kidnapper picks his next victim

They were apprehended from me.

Just like in a game of chess, my queen,

She was captured from me.

Like a teacher taking something from a student,

They were confiscated from me.

In the same way a doctor takes away an organ

They were extracted from me.

If this were a math equation, my family,

Has been divided by you and subtracted from me.

I cry in sorrow each night,

Why’d they take you from me?

I crave that same gas they used.

I want life suffocated from me.

I hear their words, they say,

“Live life, please, for me”

Writing this poem taught me how to put myself in someone else's shoes thousands of miles away. As Americans, we tend to ignore global issues and focus solely on our own country. It is time to tell the stories of those living in war-torn nations and expose the violence plaguing their homes.