BRATTLEBORO-I dip my pen into the swiftly congealing blood, the precious fluid that runs in all our veins.
This line stumbles over bodies that lay neatly stacked on the bomb-pitted ER floors. Small faces contorted in a twist of anguish as the red thread divides those who live and die.
My pen scratches out the last of a short life, my fingers trembling as the horizontal strand stretches. How long a line is the life of a child this tiny form spent.
My paintbrush loaded with red, I go right to left, as is my custom. The line is not pristine but has droplets that splash. Simply exhausted, they run from safe zone to safe zone only to be met with U.S.-made bombs. Blood money extracted from the bottom line of U.S. taxpayers.
Daily I open my window into their world hoping that the red line stops now!
Robyn Flatley
Brattleboro
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