I never really know what to do after days like this. At first there is a numbness, followed by the lighting of candles and incense for the ones we lost. I mourn, trying to light a way for the lost to find their way to a peace they couldn’t find on earth. It is small and it feels like the only thing I can do.

Then I find myself pacing in my home, unsure of what to do with my body. The urge to run, to physically exhaust myself, courses through me. I want all of the pain to run through me as quickly as possible–to be done with it–otherwise how am I supposed to go through the same motions again when the world is fundamentally changed? People are dead. Lights have been snuffed out. It seems disrespectful, dishonest, disingenuous, to go through the day like it’s all the same, so I want to be through it quickly. But it doesn’t work that way.

We, the rest of us, the survivors, the untouched are left angry. They did this to us. They put targets on our heads and hearts and cheered for someone else to pull the trigger. We want to scream back. You did this! You wanted us dead, are you happy now? I want to learn to fight, to punish anyone who might try to hurt me. The constructive side of me wants to turn pain into action, but I’m just so tired. I oscillate between the urge to cry and the urge to seek vengeance.

But more than anger, I’m left afraid. Afraid, again. Heartbroken, again. Left with the question, “what if it had been me?” I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to run. I just want to live. I just want to feel the same sun that the rest of the world feels. We shove ourselves behind closed doors to keep ourselves safe–we seek warmth in other hidden bodies, in electric lights, a false sunlight–but even that isn’t safe. Our joy, even tucked away in the dark, is too scary, too threatening somehow. So what do we do? What do I do?

I want to believe in the goodness of people, in the arch of history and humanity’s bend towards equity and freedom. I want to so badly. But how can I? We cry and scream and mourn, but it won’t bring them back. They again become our saints, our martyrs, lost souls whose names we try to memorialize.

And we, the living, are left with so little. Only our imagination and our candles provide solace. Our hopeful vision that maybe, someday, we really could dance in the sun, our tears and stolen kisses in the mournful glow of flickering candles merely memories of a time gone by.