There is nothing I can do.

Has all of this happened before? I cannot tell if this darkness is real or relative.

Maybe when I’m older I will build a wall, and things will be better. For me at least. Or perhaps as time stretches, space will grow until I cannot see across it.

I feel self-conscious that my wide-eyed horror at the stoning of a pregnant woman is inappropriate. This kind of emotion is unprofessional. I am supposed to be with me, here, now.

There is nothing I can do.

But I see her pain like she was right before me, on the steps of my home, bleeding to death from wrent flesh. No, she is not here. But what special particle in space changes the meaning of this day in her life?

I want to kill the people who did this to her. I want us all to go to where she was and do something. They showed a picture of her body, her face contorted in agony. I don’t care that she was innocent – no one should suffer this. I see her blood stained belly and the slowly dying life inside.

There is nothing I can do.

And as the moving parts of myself walk through my day like a faceless clock, I cannot forget her. The space, the distance, is not far enough. Her other country could never be far enough away.

Until, in another place, I am asked a mundane question. And my empathy diminishes until she leaves me. Vising only in quiet times, when there is no distraction. When she is one of thousands who I cannot help and should not care about.

My futility is terrifying.