‘Dear students, faculty and staff:’

You look in the mirror
and still see yourself as righteous?
You face that reflection — 
eyes unflinching, hands steady
when the lifeblood of the oppressed
runs silently beneath your touch?

You wake, say
”Let me do it again.”

You unleash billions of dollars without a blink,
unfazed by the consequences they carry.
You tip the scale in favor of one side,
ignore the rest of us.

You deem us no more than a whisper,
while the others are granted speeches.
You try to bury us in silence,
but we return louder with every breath.

How do you sip your coffee, calm and warm,
while children’s throats burn with ash from their homes?
While you walk your dog through manicured lawns,
children tiptoe through the remnants
of their shattered lives,
afraid to disturb the ground beneath their feet.

You count minutes in meetings,
they count seconds between airstrikes.
You calculate profits,
they measure the distance between life and death.
You shuffle papers,
they bury their dead.

Your silence is complicity.
Your inaction is an action.
You may not pull the trigger,
but you stand by as the bodies fall.
You may not drop the bombs,
but your guilt will answer this call.

You speak of peace,
but your hands drip with blood.
What does democracy mean
when you turn a blind eye to the violence you fund
You talk about human rights — 
but not for us.

You are quick to condemn,
but only when it’s profitable.
Do you see us?
Or are we just numbers on a screen?
How can you watch children cry for their mothers
and feel nothing?
How can you see homes turned to ash
and call it necessary?

Is your soul untouched by the suffering you create?
Does your heart not break for the innocent?
Or have you learned to switch off your empathy,
so you can sleep soundly at night?

When will your silence finally speak?
If not now — 
when will your heart break?

MiC Columnist Yasmeen Nimer can be reached at ynimer@umich.edu.

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