The Silence that Speaks

Be still and hear the silence speak.
It reverberates in the air of short breaths,
lives of purity and innocence falling back
under the rain of bullets and criminality.

Faces marked with dirt and blood,
dust and death caking the very tips
of a young man’s fingers.
His family mourns over the passing
of his soul, wrongfully accused
to be a dealer of drugs.

Look around you and see:
he is just one of them.
Virtuous, pure, and ultimately
as innocuous as the people who sit across
from each other in the coffee shop
nearby. He is a man like all others:
loving, hurting, feeling. But he is
a “shadow of doubt,” they say.

Even though he was not.

Wisps and shadows of life come to life,
but his form remains on the ground to be
part of the earthen crust,
as loud and as blaring
as the silence that speaks.

Here is where the poor is kept shut
from the impasse of thoughts
of presumed justice that thrives
amidst the softest, the loudest
of the silence that cries:
I have had enough.

By Jillian Lopez

Biography:

Jillian Lopez is a 16-year-old student from Manila, Philippines. Currently, she specializes in the Humanities and Social Sciences as a junior in senior high school, where she is pursuing her love for law and literature. She is a correspondent for her high school publication entitled Facets, and she has been publishing news and features articles, as well as editorials, for nearly two years. Jillian may be found at her book blog http://jilliansbooks.blogspot.com.