Both explosions took place over a span of ten seconds, the debris bursting up and out onto Boylston Street, tearing flesh from bone and shaking the flags that lined the marathon runner’s route. The smoke took minutes to rise from the screaming blood stained sidewalk and dissipate into the springtime air. The chaotic rapid rush of information and images and investigations took just hours to push out in waves around the world. Today the implications of what happened April 15h near the finish line of the Boston Marathon are only beginning to manifest before we’ve been able to fix a firm count on who we’ve lost.
The day after the atrocity in Boston and we do not yet know the bomb maker’s name yet but each of us can see their intent clearly, if we have the strength to look.
The bombs were meant not just to kill but also to maim, packed with ball bearings and nails and delivered at ground level where they would rip off the legs and limbs of people watching the runners run. The horrors were designed to destroy the middle-class comforts of Copley Square, the seafood restaurant and the Starbucks and the Crate and Barrel furniture store. The mayhem was meant to forever ruin the lives of the spectators who brought their children out on Patriot’s Day as well as the lives of everyone else in America, to make all of us think twice the next time we thought about going anywhere and doing anything.
Do not stop yourself from seeing what actually happened yesterday in the United States and to the United States. Look and let yourself feel. The sickening aversion is your humanity. The sadness is your love. The anger is your sense of justice.
Remembering these things will be up to you alone. The politicians and pundits will want to lull you back to the world before the bombs and it’s an easy lure, the siren’s song of everyday life where there aren’t people who use kitchen and hardware store items to make bombs that kill children on a sunny April day.
For the sake of tomorrow, do not look away today.
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