Hate: a verb, an abstract noun;

A force we co-create

Hate; ‘not being able to stand someone’

But hatred cannot stand,

 

It is disabling;

Disabling civilizations,

Stealing air; thieved breath,

A many fractured thing

Born of privilege and ire,

Born of silencing,

And hope that’s cleft,

Born of splintered lives,

Born of suffering;

Sometimes dressed up

As perverse offerings

Forgetting we are elements

Of one,

 

Hate is the abstract that would see us all abstracted,

Paint over its red lines,

Hatred, a false map, a soul made inactive

When we are, by our own hate, defined,

 

Hate; a verb, an abstract noun

That we may give our power,

Love; a verb, an abstract noun

That is hate’s funeral pyre.

 

Antonia Sara Zenkevitch

 

Written for all lost or surviving hate crime of any kind. In my mind while I wrote this were those who had lives stolen in the Islamophobic attacks in New Zealand today, but there are examples in so many places, including close to home. My hope is that communities become resilient to hate crime, making it less likely by strengthening bonds of love. In these times, friendship is the most important, primordial and political gift. We do not have to be the same to love.