Whiskey?

What a damned world we live in.

Should I read the news or pour myself a whiskey?

One tells me what's happening. The other lets me pretend it isn't.

Lately, that almost feels kinder.

Does reading about every tragedy make me a better person, or just a bitter one?

A new war.

Another grave. Or a field of them.

Another headline insisting this is unprecedented, as though history hasn't been trying to warn us all along.

We keep calling it "breaking news” as if the world hasn't been breaking for as long as we've known how to write it down.

How much grief can one person consume before breakfast?

How many names can we forget to make room for new ones?

Burnt.

Buried.

Missing.

Found.

Gone.

I wonder if there has ever been a generation that believed the world was gentle, or if every century had its own way of asking the same question.

Maybe the newspaper became the radio.

The radio became the television.

The television became the phone in my hand.

The grief just travels faster, but arrives all the same.

I wonder, when this bottle finally empties, will the world be a little quieter?

Or will I just be better at pretending not to hear it?