Murambi Hill Genocide Memorial, Rwanda
stench of preservation one white plaster hand raised in protest the other shields an infant so nakedly innocent of identity so plainly incapable of harm head sunken where club struck no evil is beyond our reach
classroom after room bodies cast where found struck down one after another ten thousand times daily for one hundred days equals one million bodies in ditches mass graves refuge turned trap tomb museum
genocide is never spontaneous Belgian colonizers counted cows… Tutsi own 10 or more, Hutu up to 9, Twa have no cows then punished anyone caught without identification
at the national memorial in a room comparing genocides throughout history I read Hitler’s campaign slogan as he rose to power: “Make Germany Great Again”
Belgians saw European features in Tutsi faces and named them superior. Hutu extremists later saw cockroaches worthy of murder. In both cases the evil we see in another is merely the evil we harbor in our own hearts.
no one has ever marched backwards towards halcyon past and arrive in future utopia - belonging built on exclusion means living in fear you’ll become the hunted one when you run out of others or when they rise up
walking the red clay path past grass and murmuring goats a toddler approaches wraps her plump arms around my legs for a moment there is no kindness beyond reach if we see infinite within our flesh
this is freedom no terrorist can threaten no immigrant can steal from you a machete can split ripe fruit or human skin depending on the mind wielding it
we become greater than ourselves dredging our own evil before accusing any other body step towards truth of equal worth again and again
Frederick Livingston (he/him) is a spoken word ecologist born at the southern tip of the Salish Sea. He is the author of the award-winning Trees are Bridges to the Sky and the poetry collection The Moon and Other Fruits. He writes to plant seeds for a more fruitful Earth.
