Tomorrow, Saturday, December 14th, marks the one year anniversary of something unspeakably wrong.
I posted this just under a year ago on my Litbits blog. I posted it then primarily as poetry aimed at dealing with my own shock and outrage at such an atrocity and, hopefully, to aid in our mutual healing over the shared sense of grief and shame. A year later, I post it here at innerwoven because it was a scenario deeply illustrative of the overwhelming but often neglected needs of a human soul. This is what happens when sickness, either of soul or mind or both, is left untouched or worse, unnoticed. Any statements needing to be made from socio-political, policy places I leave for others.
A year later…Lord, have mercy.
* * *
Dedicated to the 26 sweet souls whose tears, now dried, fears now abated, pain now gone and thirst now assuaged can rest tucked in the bosom of God. From our vantage of dark remembrance and empty ache we remember you. We remember you.
I saw you today.
You wiped your nose on the new sweater Grandma made for you.
I saw you today
picking up the rabbit by her ears a little too rough. When she scratched your arm you cried.
I saw you today
fighting with your sister over the last of the McDonald’s fries, a Happy Meal’s empty promise.
I saw you today
playing with the other kids in the nasty ball pit that smelled suspiciously like pee and bleach.
I saw you today
crying over losing your Auntie Doris’s broach you had silently stolen from Mom’s bureau.
I saw you today
yelling at your brother to stop bouncing you so hard on the see-saw.
I saw you today
at your piano recital. You played a piece from “Chopin for Kids.”
I saw you today
through the window as you were coloring something. You chewed on your tongue.
I saw you today
as the school nurse dried your tears while applying the bandage to your wounded shin.
It’s Saturday,
I didn’t see you today.
Photo courtesy of www.funtasianyc.com
innerwoven 