Sodom and Gomorrah don’t seem so lonely after all.

Cities are burning for a boy that will never breathe again, a boy that will never know what six bullets can do. His mother will grieve on top of a car surrounded by hundreds in the cold night who sit and wait. Always waiting.

She will only ever see his face.

Some are beating their chests with fists that couldn’t shatter glass, preaching about a revolution that could break the system. Some are looking at their hands racked with guilt, picturing blood that was never there. Some are silent.

See, it’s hard to swallow the world when you can’t even scroll down a twitter feed without seeing it burning right in front of you. A boy died. This is the truth. This may be the only truth I can handle right now, the only truth that I can comprehend.

A boy died. In the middle of a street with his mother blocks away, and the sound of his future whistling through his ears.

A boy has died.

But this is not Sodom and Gomorrah. This is not Babylon or Berlin or Birmingham. This is 2014. This is the reality we have, the world we wake up to and cling to everyday. This is our world. We have to fight for it. This generation has to believe in it and care for it. Right?

I may be a romantic or come off as a tree-hugging hippie. I am not. I am simply someone who is tired of fighting for the world. Because it is hard. It is hard every day to convince myself to not turn off the news completely like my mother did. It is hard to go on twitter and see boys dying and people fighting for a cause they don’t always understand. It is hard to worry about constantly being on the wrong side of history. It is hard to write this and believe it. Because the lists get longer and soon I’m afraid we’re going to be naming our children after the wars we’ve caused.

So we can fight this. We can fight for justice, whatever that may mean, as we very well should. But the world will not fight for you. The world didn’t fight to save Babylon or Berlin. The world watched as Sodom and Gomorrah burned. But we can fight.

Fight for the boy who died. Fight for the ones dying all over the world.

This is the truth. You can choose to sharpen your tongue and use the words on a screen, but know what you’re fighting for. You can stand up to the system, just as you can stand in the middle of a street and throw fake blood at a police officer, and hurl tear gas back at them, and burn our flag with the word “patriot” still fresh on your tongue. You can fight the system, but you will also be fighting yourself.

You don’t always have to carry the world. You can pick your battles wisely. You can believe in the world.