There was something that resonated with her.

Something in her eyes as she stared back at the camera, seeing it there but looking past it in the way that only someone having an epiphany could.

Then the blood ran from her nose.

I can’t close my eyes and make it go away

and though I was on the other side of the world I cried out to her:

“No, no no!”

Just as her father shouted something similar in his language, standing over her, holding the hole where her soul escaped.

In his world his life’s work was bleeding freely from the mouth and eyes- eyes that had never closed, like they do in the fiction from my world.

No, in my world children flocked to grocery stores to buy Hallmark cards as a cultural thank you note. Some even will go a step farther and plan to go to the movies. Maybe go for dinner someplace nice.

I’ll go too, but I won’t be able to forget

that a father went out with their daughter to protest
and came back alone.

And it’s true we are immune
when fact is fiction and tv reality