Orlando

 The candles from the vigil fill the summer air with a soft glow and the smell of hundreds of sweaty humans trying to make sense of it all, but our voices are small and we can only make tears.
Grief openly contorts our features but fear is what hums in the backs of our minds as cares drive by, some with compassion, some with hate inside.
It's strange that the click of a trigger echoing across mountain ranges and rivers can send shivers down my spine and shove my own mortality in my face from so far away.
Yet, mother culture has molded me to edge closer to the police officer sent to protect us because I know he has a gun.

Our position in life is tenuous and easily changed by weak minds always looking for checkmate trying to find a quick way to end the game because the world didn't follow their script on a particular day.
Life is uncomfortable sometimes.
No one has ever promised otherwise, but how many people must die for the trumped up crime of threatening someone's fragile homeostasis?
Or because they are a mirror that reflects a face the viewer hates because it is truth?

Orlando,
A coward wanted to play commando while you danced.
He wanted to add your name to a long list in a chapter of our history that we refuse to read.
He succeeded because we live in an era that views what happened to you as within the acceptable parameters of normalcy.

Orlando,
You are bleeding. You are grieving.
The rest of your community knows we've cheated death because the roulette ball didn't fall on our town this time.
The bullet was in your chamber when he pulled the trigger.

Orlando,
Your graves have become pulpit.
Even before the dirt is dry, opinions fly around faster than the bullets that took you down.
My heart breaks for folks I'll never know as I watch your names used as tools to spew agendas for media and news just as responsible for your deaths as the man who planned them.

Orlando,
We shout your name louder than the torrent of hate, even as your letters were hijacked by the man that signed your death warrant to declare war on love because he couldn't love himself.
The shadow of his hate will follow you now and always because the victims are always left to hold the consequences,
but they will fade into a hard scar and link with others to form the armor of those to come after.

They want us to hide. Stand up. We will paint your eyes in the sky.
The rainbow is a symbol of peace and we've tattooed it to our cause, but we cannot be made afraid of the sun, we will not swim in shame for who we love.
Let the light of these candles reach you in heaven and warm your heart.
Know you aren't alone,.because someone has left a light burning for you at home.