crutches

there once was a man who, unwilling to allow himself, even for a moment, to forget about the poor, the desperate, the tortured, the dying, the hungry, the crying, the raped, or the saddened bombarded himself with an unbroken chain of images, sounds, and records that sustained him in a state of constant sorrow about happenings around the world. his body, mind, and heart etched to the desk. his laptop. his TV. his radio. googling. shuffling between channels. tuning in and out. listening for grave voices that report disasters. searching for sombre faces amidst footage of war. scanning for words like victims, flood, Taliban, destruction, die, violence spike, Rwanda. it took him that much effort to wallow in that state of catastrophic depression about the world. he died young. his face embedded with deep frown lines like that of an old man, and his heart, still crying.