Three lives,
gone in the span of two dawns.
Sirens wail,
candles flicker,
headlines shout their hollow grief.

We gather in circles,
mouths full of mourning words,
hearts still empty,
still cold,
still bent toward violence.

The command is simple:
Love one another,
second only to loving Him.
Yet we splinter it,
shatter it,
bury it beneath politics
and easy prayers
that cost us nothing.

Three names,
three souls.
They cry louder than our slogans.
This is no time
for rehearsed laments,
for hands folded in apathy.

Return.
Not to rhetoric,
not to platitudes polished with piety,
but to God.
Earnestly,
wholly,
like life depends on it,
because it does.