Bears

Bears

Dear America,

Studious and creative cubs

once hibernated in a sacred space

to engage in play and digest

fruits of knowledge unaware

that their final exam week was code

for their final destination!

Mamas and daddies are now helpless and hopeless as their children bawl from afar, clawing for their lives and longing for protection from a familiar predator: evil dressed in black whose presence is a sobering reminder of our chronic quiescence.

We continue to lick our wounds with saliva coated with thoughts and prayers, an antidote

that has lost it’s potency to heal our grieving nation, gasping for the freedom to live and roam in peace.

Dr Clark is an outpatient psychiatrist at Prisma Health-Upstate and clinical associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Greenville. He served on the American Psychiatric Association’s Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry, and he currently serves as the Diversity and Inclusion section editor and advisory board member for Psychiatric Times.