We don’t remember their names.

Two days, and we don’t remember any of their names.

The memory of the Thousand Oaks California shooting

is swept aside by the raging wildfires.

The fires started a day after,

and it seems it took just one day to forget the dead.

He’s a marine, they say.

He has PTSD, they say.

They say;

They say so many things,

like they should be said,

like they are needed to be said,

like all crimes are forgiven,

like the man who walked in

didn’t gun down thirteen people

or injure twelve.

And I can’t help but to

grab a map out of my

drawer, and count

One, two, three,

the number of Hundred-Miles

from me and from my family and from my friends.

They were friends, too.

And no one remembers their names.

And as I cry to myself—

not aloud, no, because that would be stupid in a world

where thoughts and prayers and tears do nothing,

where they are murmured as a half-assed spell

that could somehow breathe air into those now trapped in

body bags—

I do so around the people I know will forget

Because they always seem to forget.