{"id":2405,"date":"2023-06-25T11:26:16","date_gmt":"2023-06-25T11:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/?p=2405"},"modified":"2023-06-25T11:26:16","modified_gmt":"2023-06-25T11:26:16","slug":"send-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/2023\/06\/25\/send-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Send Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><em>Featured in the 2016 Spring Issue of Rambunctious<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">Send Me\nAfua Addo, '16\n\nSend me, send me\nI shout as I wave my arms\nfrantically in the air, send me. I am \na young boy, but why does it matter? \nAll you need is a person that is willing \nto go. Well I am willing so send me. I \nwill look death in the eyes, so that your \nchild will be safe and call this place \nhome.\nI will crawl through the thickness of\nthe mud and drink the tears of my\nenemies to protect you and your little brothers\nand sisters. I will cry out to the sky\nuntil the clouds part ways so I can burn \nin the heat of the sun if it means that \nyou will never have to. So your sons \nand daughters will never have to \nshade their eyes from the glorious \nsun rays because they are afraid \nof losing their sight. Is that not what \nyou want? Someone who is willing \nto die for you so that you can live on? \nIt's all about sacrifice. You want to give \nme the hope that I will escape from \nthe jaws of death so that you\nwill never have to leave the comfort\nof your beds. So that you will never have\nto humble yourself in the dead of night to pray \nfor a boy who will never return. Who are \nwe fighting again? Perhaps, all that time \nraising my hand has distracted me. \nThe blood has drained completely \nfrom my hand now and I no\nlonger remember why I raised it in the \nfirst place. Who are we fighting? The \nenemy? The war itself? Or the urge \nwithin ourselves to return to peace \nand tranquility. But why stop now, you \nsay? Why should there be a ceasefire \nwhen we have become so good at\nlaunching our missiles and driving our tanks? \nLook at our endurance! See how we have \nspent centuries of our history on the battlefield. \nWe're professionals and we're proud of our \naccomplishments. We are proud of how easily we \ncan rip men and women from the embraces of their \nfamilies. They still smile and wait for tomorrow. But \ntomorrow is a day that I hope to wake up and see \nnothing, but light and smell nothing but the the fresh \nair that the birds so eloquently move around with \nthe flutter of their wings. I hope I will never again have\nto awake from my slumber to declare myself a \nsacrifice for people who are tired of war and for \nwars who are tired of people. I pray that \ntomorrow I will not have to wave my arm \nfrantically in the air to say, \"Send me, send me\" \nbecause I am young and it does matter. \nOne day there will be no need to look death in \nthe eyes because death will have dwindled in its \npower. Only then will your child will be safe \nand call this place\nhome.\n\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Afua Addo, &#8217;16<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"full-width-single-post.php","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2406,"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405\/revisions\/2406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdlitmag.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}