Words for the Contradictions

Things we don't want to hear

There's a girl in the bathroom vomiting,

and her friend is deciding whether or not to eat at all.

There's a bullied boy down the hall wondering

 what it would be like to be the one on top.

There's a man a few doors down,

who tells his wife she's not good enough,

and a mother who is so doped up, 

she doesn't hear her baby's screams.

There's a little girl wondering where daddy went, 

and another one trying to take care of her siblings

 while mama cries into her pillow 

wondering what went wrong.

A young woman is crying in her shower,

images of the dark alley and the man in the black ski mask.

She has bruises across her back and a hesitation 

to tell anyone, because it's her own fault.

Across the room there's a boy planning his death

and a girl, her funeral.

Someone just robbed a store.

Someone else just ended someone's life.

These are the things

 we don't want to hear

the things we don't say

the things we ignore

We pretend that it's all okay

and when we stop pretending,

We place the blame on everyone,

anyone else's shoulders

Because we don't think,

we don't recognize that our silence, 

our quote unquote ignorance,

makes us guilty by omission

These are the things we don't want to hear

because Suicide is too dark,

Rape is too sleazy and,

Anxiety and Depression is all in our heads.

I know that

The things we don't want to hear

are the things we need to hear.

And I pray to God you realize this too.

This is meant to be a spoken word poem but i figured i'd put it up anyway