This I can tell you: a word is rarely harmless.
It can strike like a match in dry grass,
or, it can steady your shaking hand in the dark.
It can build a bridge or load a gun.
.
Socrates said it plain, misuse a word
and you bend your own soul.
Twist language into bait, into weapon, into currency,
and it will come back to claim its debt.
.
Charlie Kirk is gone.
Not by argument nor by debate but
by a bullet tearing through the silence.
And in that sound, I heard neither justice, nor triumph,
but the collapse of everything words are meant to carry.
.
Do you see it? The crowd split in two;
one side grieving, one side gloating,
both forgetting the same truth:
to kill a man is not to kill his words.
They linger. They stain.
They multiply in the bloodstream of our culture.
.
I will not pretend I agreed with him.
His language, to me, was confected, biased, bent.
But he spoke, and I spoke back.
That was the risk, the fragile bargain
broken by a gun. And now,
the conversation lies bleeding.
.
So hear me:
we cannot afford to use words like slogans,
like weapons, like shields.
We cannot keep turning our tongues into profits
and expect the soul to survive it.
Words are not tricks,
they are bone, breath, blood.
And when they are misused,
the whole body sickens.
.
So risk it. Speak truth,
even when it cuts your own throat.
Speak care,
even when anger burns your tongue.
Speak as though the soul of the world
is listening at the keyhole – because it is.
.
And remember:
when language is silenced by gunfire,
it is not one man who dies.
It is all of us, who choke on the smoke
of words left unsaid.
The words of Peter Akinwunmi (Peter Ak'i) 