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710 Days

They finally said the word.
710 days too late,
but they said it.

 

Genocidal acts.

 

The careful counting

while children stopped breathing.

The documented death,

delayed decisions.

The shuffle of papers

while families screamed.

 

My Inner-Roma child asks me:

"Why did they wait so long

to say what we could see?"

 

I taste ash

when I try to answer.

 

We know this rhythm

how institutions measure murder

in acceptable doses,

how they academic-ise annihilation

until it fits their forms.

 

The commission's words

sit heavy in my stomach.

Truth that burns the throat to speak:

Recognition without action

is just another form

of complicity.

 

710 days of choosing

to look away,

to gather evidence

instead of stopping bullets,

to debate definitions

while defining a people

out of existence.

 

But some threw their bodies

into the gears:

Students occupying campuses,

workers refusing to load weapons,

artists breaking complicit silence.

 

The machine can be stopped.

We know how:

Embargo the arms—today.

Freeze the assets—now.

Sanction the enablers.

Divest from death.

Vote them out.

 

Knowledge that makes hands shake

demands hands that work.

 

Call your representative today.

Join the next protest.

Share it widely.

Don't let them forget.

 

The earth bleeds

in patterns we've documented,

but this time we see it

in real time,

and we know

what to call it

while it happens.

 

The question haunts:

Will we choose

to stop it?

 

Tonight, somewhere,

a child counts to 711

and wonders if anyone

is counting back.

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