This feels somehow urgent to say today. Maybe it is, maybe not. Maybe it’s just a way to feel like I’m saying something, doing something, contributing something as we grieve the unending barrage of death and mourning in America. Maybe I’m just adding to the noise. I don’t know anything today.
This is not a statement of philosophy, of faith. This is simply a mother in her moment of mourning on the morning of this twenty-fifth of May, 2022. I hope you understand.
On the morning after nineteen children were murdered, my son wanted strawberries.
t.r.h. blue
Today you spilled
milk all over the floor
and I thought
of the tendons and
bones in your hands.
You shouted, you yowled for
strawberries we don’t have
and I thought
of the lobes of your lungs,
how you sing in your bed
every morning,
life.
Today I picked you up
and my lower back ached like
it usually does these days.
You hugged me big,
your strong, small arms
snug at the
back of my neck.
And my body billowed
with love and fear.
God damn Abraham
for putting his son on the altar.
And God damn America too.