Terrorism is Every Step

I have told you once how the bees are our ancestors. Bumble bees. Worker bees. Queen bees. Bee stings. How they contemplate flowers like fiddling with the feet of newborn babies. How they wrassle the petals like play time.

The honeybees appear to be dwindling, and scientists are targeting pesticides. Human development. My ancestors were not so allergic to corn, so bone sensitive to sweeteners when sweetener was not high fructose corn syrup. The messes we make and how we call them necessary.

Are the honeybees dwindling according to honeybees?

My ancestors are farmers. My ancestors are soldiers. My grandpas. My uncles. My cousin. They risked, and in my beloved, young cousin, Captain Jeff Sowecke’s case—do risk, their overall comfort and well-being to defend the lifestyles of the citizens of the United States. And yet I’ve never been able to get past the part where the violence is inhumane, not to mention how some, including myself, can buy their way out of conscious, first-hand experience with systemic, worldwide War.

Scientists are also targeting predisposition to post traumatic stress disorder among soldiers. Aversion to violent human death is only chronically sickening to some.

I left New York City carrying post-traumatic stress like a full-term pregnancy due to be born. It wasn’t the recurring visuals of human bodies dropping from buildings no longer towering into the sky or the rumble of the collapsing pillars or the smell of the crispy skyscraper remains or the surge in everything American flag or how eventually folks returned to being so fucking cool.

I would have become an interior designer specializing in manifesting illusions of creativity for filthy rich folk with money to blow.

It wasn’t the residual senses of terror, the feeling that every day, especially the sunniest days, were plum due for another terrorist attack. It wasn’t even necessarily the abundance of shade and the absence of earth. In hindsight, I can see that I left New York City to obtain a creative writing degree. Additionally, I left behind the daily, haunted inklings of terror.

So the terrorists won.

One year ago today, Dr. George Tiller was shot pointblank in his church lobby while ushering. His wife was seated with the choir. He was shot because he provided abortion with the sweetest zest and sheer mastery of a man called by The Spirit to ensure human dignity, justice, and well-being. He saved lives day after day after day.

It is staggeringly bittersweet to the core of my veryest knowing that the force that was with Dr. Tiller has pixilated into abundant flowery fields, his soul like wild fire, like pollinating bees in love with life. Where once Dr. Tiller was our brooding pillar of hope, there is now an abortion army—peaceful warriors stirring with wands and flutes.

But the anti-abortion terrorists have not gone away. And oh, how their delusional hatred is always one step away from blowing up an abortion clinic or murdering our compassionate doctors in their most sacred spaces. They terrorize women and families and you are still willing to call them pro-life, to question values of women who abort, to buy your way out of having to care that there are war zones in your very own country, right in-front of your face.

So the terrorists win.

One year ago today, I awoke to a crystalline day and the leaves about my locust tree were flickering with the wind and the bird songs and roses were following us everywhere and I didn’t have a care in the world until noon when my dearest friend informed me of our loss.

I have learned to expect devastating news on perfect days. I have wept for our saintly Dr. Tiller over and over and over again. Just sobbed. Just oozed with tears like Niagara Falls and the mists and the rainbows. I have wondered if dying for something is anymore righteous than dying from something when it is all just death in the end.

It isn’t the residual sense of terror, the feeling that every day, especially the most motherly and heartbreaking and abortion-affirming days, are equally laden with gross misperceptions and limited value judgment about my line of work. How people like to try to siphon the baking powder from the abortion chocolate cake. It isn’t even the sadness and how I have toiled over my profession more than I’ve toiled over any loss of a loved one or my sickest, scaredest self.

I’m leaving my profession because terrorists killed our valiant doctor and I want to write an abortion love story with his immortal will that writhes lively on inside of me. I want to wake up to perfect mornings somewhere where terrorists don’t care to exist as much. How I can buy my way through the fear. Experience it. Give it wings.

Terrorists never win in their hearts that still want to ooze with clean honey love, but neither does anyone until everyone is free to fear sweet fear.