Catharsis b : a purification or purgation that brings spiritual renewal or release from tension  In the sixth grade I witnessed the events of September 11th 2001 and realized we live in a world much larger than ourselves and our country LShortly After my cousins joined the Marine Corps and when to Afghanistan It is then I began following the News, and the News began following me. Since then I have made it my duty, nay obsession to understand with full comprehension the pain of the world. From the age of fifteen I Became a Vegan and subjected myself to videos of the panic and dismemberment of animals in slaughterhouses I have found footage of Iraq and Afghanistan we were not meant to see I have learned where the complexity of this world leads and attempted to take on the pain of strangers through video screens to know what actions in our world really mean Amongst the Darkest and grainiest footage and most sorrowful stories I have found a light Creativity, There is a girl the same age as me who paints graffiti in Afghanistan’s Kandahar providence, her name is Malina Suliman, She paints to depict and release the pain around herI write for Malina I write for everyone who creates instead of destroys  for everyone who has hurt and has learned to use that painrather than pass it on to another I write for my cousins who have lived a life I will never lead, who have seen their brothers in battle bleed, and have heard the ohm of helicopters over desert skies. I write for every afghani family separated by the spears of extremism and greedwho fear the shadow of the buzzard fearing death from aboveI write for the Taliban because someone has to pray for them  I write for Somali Children who do not know what a day without gunfire sounds likeWho have forgotten the beauty of birdsong amongst the applause of riflesWho have built up a tolerance to the battery acid taste of fear  I write for every witch burnt, for joan of ark, for Girodano Bruno and all those killed for what they believed for every Palestinian and Israeli hoping one day they may hold each other as family for the fires of revolution that burn in the hearts of those who know their voice matters, I write for the soldiers without the luxury of body armor fighting for their right to live as they see fit.  for the police who beat them, for the ignorance of their world, the fear they feal, the comradry they value and the misogyny and the batons and the blood I write for the bloodThe blood my friends, who have overdosed, and the confusion they felt, chasing god in the end of a pipe or needle, and for their families who know they found it I write for the blood of my family tree cut short by Nazi Germany and the relatives I will never know nor see I write for the blood that flows through me in hopes one day it will become the ink of a Rorschach test which will let us see proof we are not alone Proof we are not crazyProof that this happens for a reason as our mind organizes chaos into patternsProof there is something beyond our comprehension but more then anything elseI write for you For there is ink in your veins, there is pain in your heart and there is purity to be found for the possibilities of minds to grow like a lotus from fear and ignorance to enlightenment and hope For the potential of the tad pole, the sperm and the egg, the nest and the bed and the words in your head I write for the extacy of bees rolling in a flowers petals like a dog in the grass after a bath For happiness is a butterfly the net of laguage may never catchSomething we must feel to know I write to attempt justice to a sunflower in blossom but what is my pen to the brush strokes of evolution? I writebecause those storm clouds that darken our days provide the rains for a fertile mind I write for growthCatharsis