Our Daughters / In Rainbows
The dichotomy of existence is a terrible weight.
Our Daughters / In Rainbows
In the morning, our daughters wanted confetti pancakes. Factory produced, covered in an explosion of rainbow sprinkles, plastic frosting—consolidated joy. In the morning, our daughters woke up and went to school, filled with dreams, laughter, ease. In the morning, our daughters wanted to see the sharks at the aquarium. In the morning, our daughters saw a rainbow at sunrise.
In the morning, we dropped four tons of tomahawk cruise missiles on our daughters and called them a valid military target.
In the morning, we ate with distant family and took photos of our daughters together. They pulled all the marshmallows (hearts, stars, and horseshoes) from the cereal and the stained milk splattered down their chins. They wanted to know what was at the end of the rainbow. How similar they looked. How they grew so fast.
In the morning, we buried 165 of our daughters under rubble for their parents to dig through with bloody fingers—shaking, crying, searching for an arm, a leg, a backpack they recognized—while air raid sirens howled grief.
In the morning, our daughters picked their favorite stuffed animal to take to school. Bunny again this week. Kissed its face and shared their breakfast. Buckled it into the car. Safety first.
In the morning, we watched excavators dig perfectly measured tombs for incomplete bodies of our daughters covered in white dust. Two feet wide, four feet long. Dirt lot pockmarked, rectangular openings without true bottom. They continued forever into an abyssal understanding of industrialized human violence.
In the morning, we bought our daughter’s favorite berries at the store, always perfectly ripe and in stock, and rushed home to eat half the container together, fingers sticky with jam and debris, smiling teeth stained black with fruit flesh. They asked about the end of the rainbow, and we shook our heads.
In the morning, we burned depots outside our daughter’s windows. We choked their skies, poisoned their land, their water, their food, ruined the future for their cities with black, billowing clouds that rained oil. We killed them too, but slower.
In the morning, we showed our daughters a book about rainbows. Cartoons explained how a rainbow was a refraction of water droplets, how it doubled, twinned, how it was actually a full circle. We showed them how it was always about their focal point - the rainbow was always about them.
In the morning, we launched a barrage of missiles in great parabolic rainbows. They screamed freedom, democracy, peace as they split the sky. They were powered by marshmallows and cartoons and confetti pancakes. They found their end in apartment complexes, and exploded our daughters in their sleep.
In the morning, we hugged our daughters tight and cried and let the void howl through us as they squirmed and didn’t understand our explosion of love, our barrage of parental grief, why we could ever be sad on a sunny Saturday.
May they never understand.
I’ve been haunted by images of what’s happening in Iran. Photos of child-sized mass graves and cities covered in black clouds overwhelmed me. In so many ways, again and again, I see the world breaking. We are not defined by our leader’s decisions, and yet we are irreparably scarred by them. I did not choose to bomb civilians, and yet my tax dollars supported it. The bomb that killed those children was likely made in the state I live. I may have shopped for groceries with people that assembled it.
I’m a humanist. I don’t believe in borders or world powers or nation states. I don’t believe in drowning violence against civilians with more violence against civilians. I believe in human beings.
The only freedom our bombs bring is death.
Call your representatives. Demand action and accountability. Again.
Fiction returns next week.
I don't think they see the Iranians as people. How can they? This is heartbreaking and surely a war crime.
Starting the war on Iran was, as it will turn out, a very stupid thing to do on the part of the American Empire and their Zionist ally - neither of them have the manufacturing capability to keep this war going for very long, whereas Iran has been fully preparing for something like this for years. Of course there is an effective media blackout about the scale of the damage being inflicted on Israel and the American forces/bases in the region, but I believe Iran knows that it needs to finish this once and for all - especially after the enemy murdered her children and their leader - which is like murdering the pope on the steps of St. Peter's during holy week then bombing the crap out of innocent Roman children - except you hardly hear anyone speaking like that - which reveals an inherent islamophobia of course. But I do think that this will become an endgame situation - this of course is where it gets dangerous, because the Empire has nuclear weapons.
If only the American people could rise up and remove their leaders, the ones responsible for all this, then start being friendly with the rest of the world instead of pathologically trying to dominate it all, then the world could become a better place for everyone. Chances of that happening, however? <1%. That's the real problem. The pathological psychopaths in power are a very small minority, but the majority don't seem to want to do anything about it (perhaps because they've been told that this might seem too much like 'socialism').
It is a heartbreaking tragedy. Especially for those of us in a minority who can see what's wrong and would unhesitatingly rise up and stop it, but we don't have the numbers. Until this problem is resolved, the tragedy will continue.
Thank you for writing this piece, Ian - it needed to be said. Well, it needs to be shouted out all over the place.