Listen
Somewhere right now, someone is somebody's whole world
(every one)

Nobody is born a stranger
We learn it, the way we learn to hate a color or a border
Nobody is born with a list of who deserves to breathe
Someone handed us the list, and we never asked who wrote it (who wrote it)
You with your finger on a trigger, on a button, on a word
Hear me, the one you're aiming at has a name someone whispers in the dark
Has a laugh that somebody still replays, alone, at night
And you can end the sound, but you cannot end the echo (the echo)

Nobody is born an enemy
We are taught it with a story and a flag and a fear
Nobody is born knowing whose blood is worth less
That arithmetic was written by the ones who never bled (never bled)
A life is not a number on a screen in a faraway room
It is eighty years of mornings stacked behind a single face
You do not own the ending of a story you did not write
No flag, no creed, no cause ever handed you that pen (not one)

Nobody is born to be erased
Not for the color of a face, not for the name a person prays to
Not for the side of a line some stranger drew on a map
Not for standing in the way of someone else's want (someone's want)
Every grave is a sentence that stopped halfway
Every war is a million sentences stopped halfway
And the ones who stopped them rarely knew the first word
Of what they ended, and that is what should keep us awake (keep us awake)

Respect each other
It is the smallest thing, and the only thing
Another person's life is not yours to end (not yours)

Nobody walks alone unless we let them
So let us make it harder to be lost
Put it down, whatever you are holding, put it down
And look at the face you were about to erase (look)
That face is you in a different century
That breath is the same breath, passed around the world
Each one matters, every one, and every one is here
We are here (we are here)

We are here
(each one)