For dVerse Poets Pub – OpenLinkNight – where Sanaa is our host.
Today’s topic :
Hello dVerse Poets! Sanaa here (aka adashofsunny) delighted to host Open Link Night today and Live edition on Saturday.
You can link up one poem of your choice below or write to the optional mini prompt which we are offering today.
Open Link Night #413 with Live Edition
Twenty euros. Two notes. A meal. A few coffees. Something forgotten at the bottom of a pocket. Twenty fucking euros. That was the price put on a young man's life yesterday evening. Twenty-three years old. Old enough to have dreams, young enough to believe there would be thousands of tomorrows left. But there he was, bleeding into the street, while girls and women pressed their hands against his wounds, trying to hold life inside him. Stay with us. Don't go. Please. Hands covered in blood because they chose to help. And around them— phones. Men and boys standing there, not reaching for him, but reaching for cameras. Recording. Posting. Sharing. As if another human being's last moments were content. As if his blood was entertainment. As if somewhere behind a screen a like, a share, a view mattered more than the person dying in front of them. My daughters received the videos. The photographs. Images that should never have travelled beyond that street. And I keep wondering— when did we become this? When did witnessing suffering stop meaning help and start meaning film? A mother lost her son. A family lost someone they can never replace. A young man lost every birthday, every sunrise, every ordinary tomorrow he should have had. And somewhere online, his final moments keep moving from phone to phone to phone. Twenty euros. Don't tell me that was what his life was worth. His life was worth infinitely more. Twenty euros was only the reason someone gave themselves for taking it. And perhaps the ugliest part is that while he lay dying, some people still couldn't see a human being. They saw something to post. May he be remembered not for the footage, not for the blood, not for the street where he died— but for the twenty-three years he lived before someone decided twenty fucking euros were worth more than his tomorrow.
https://www.blenza.com/linkies/links.php?owner=dversepoets&postid=09Aug2026&meme=13354
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
My new album “Beneath The Northern Star ” is out . You can save the songs on your streaming platforms here:
🌙 Beneath the Northern Stars – My New Album
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