Every one is ours

a writing prompt for you

I’m having trouble writing an introduction to this post while news reports say 160+ school girls were killed by US and Israeli bombs in Iran.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got for an introduction.

Here’s the writing prompt.

a writing prompt

Use the poem below as your prompt. Find a word, a phrase, an image and start there.

I usually say you can talk back to a poem if you want, but there is no talking back to this one.

Note: I’ve seen this poem attributed to James Baldwin, but other sources indicate it was written by Nikita Gill based on a quote from Baldwin.

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Every bombed village is my hometown

—by Nikita Gill

“Every bombed village is my hometown” - James Baldwin

And every dead child is my child.
Every grieving mother is my mother.
Every crying father is my father.
Every home turned to rubble
is the home I grew up in.
Every brother carrying the remains
of his brother across borders
is my brother.
Every sister waiting for a sister
who will never come home
is my sister.

Every one of these people are ours,
Just like we are theirs.
We belong to them
and they belong to us.

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Welcome to Writing in Company! This is a community for you, whatever your experience with writing. It’s an invitation to write about what matters—grief, gratitude, grace, and more. In an off-kilter world, using our words can help us stay centered and move toward healing and wholeness. Writing in company with others saved me once. Let’s keep writing now, alone and together, and trust our words to help us see and say what matters.

Each week I share some ideas and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft a writing project, as prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. If this one doesn’t resonate, look back through the archive for more. Clicking the heart to like this post helps keep my writing prompts visible and my own writer’s heart grateful.

Photo by ali karimi on Unsplash