The Boy

That moment when you open up your social media feed and there is a three year old boy lying face down in the water. He looks like he is sleeping peacefully, when all around him there is hurried movement and anxious strained faces. You are watching it from a comfortable chair in front of your flickering screen. 

Your belly is full and your heart is throbbing. 

He looks so small.

There is an uncomfortable feeling in your chest that something is not right. Like a sharp relentless pin prick, it pushes into your lungs. It lets out air. 

You breathe because you can.

 You look at the keyboard and you realise it is wet. You are crying. It hurts and you are overwhelmed by sadness. There are pictures of LOL cats streaming down your feed and soon the child disappears underneath a heavy load of manic unicorns and bearded hipsters selling jeans. 

Where is that child now? Where is his family?

 Someone has tweeted the image and it has gone viral. Now there is suddenly  a steady stream of political satire and political commentary following down the social media feed. Sometimes you can't tell which is which. There is outrage, there are people talking. So much talking. 

But the child is still dead. 

The sadness vanishes. It is replaced by a desperate helpless anger. You are trapped at your desk, in your chair looking at an advertisement for a magical cream that makes your sagging skin look 'tight and lifted'. 

Among the white noise the air seems to clear for a moment as words drift up like bubbles that make sense of the confusion. You could sign a petition. You see one rise to the surface and you begin to feel hopeful. You sign it. You feel relieved. But then the anxiety begins to rise again as you notice that nothing has changed. 

You update your Facebook post about your sadness, but you don't share the picture of the boy because you worry that the sadness will pervade your friends news feed and spread like a virus into their comfortable happy lives. It might put them off their breakfast or make them pause between mouthfuls from the queazy reality that turns even the tastiest poached egg into dust. 

...Or worse they may unfriend you for posting such unsavoury images.

You lay your head on your keyboard and the keys stick as they rush across the page in a flurry of busyness, writing nonsensical letters that reflect your confused state of mind. There is a cognitive dissonance between the person you are and the person you want to be and you wish you had never seen that picture at all because you are, after all, far away and helpless to save the boy.

And after all, he is already dead. 

More at peace you hope, than the turmoil he has left behind.