Sudden and Done
by Muriel Lindsay
20 children dead..
Very much alive a minute ago, pulling out their pencil boxes.
One by one they were felled, like small saplings. A whirring madness pushed open a door of no return leaving, post cacophony, just red running stickiness and air swollen and pregnant with sorrow-to-come.
Now a blanket of enduring the unendurable wraps around the shoulders of a whole town. First responders do their job and become the ones to break the perimeter and be the first to enter into the place where safety was ripped from its mother’s arms. It’s an abominable job.
Somewhere, parents are still living in a crystalline bubble that is soon going to shatter into a million pieces. They will be removing shards forever.
The consolers will emerge and do their best, but they too will be looking through mud.
The earth will spin and push time further away from this thing, so sudden and done before anyone had a chance to say “not here” “not now” “not to us.” If only earth would reverse spin, to before the chubby hands had reached for the pencil boxes. That would give us just enough time to wrap love’s sash around and around that school building. We could have done that, if we had had just a little more time.
. . .
(written on day of the shooting of the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School)
by Muriel Lindsay
20 children dead..
Very much alive a minute ago, pulling out their pencil boxes.
One by one they were felled, like small saplings. A whirring madness pushed open a door of no return leaving, post cacophony, just red running stickiness and air swollen and pregnant with sorrow-to-come.
Now a blanket of enduring the unendurable wraps around the shoulders of a whole town. First responders do their job and become the ones to break the perimeter and be the first to enter into the place where safety was ripped from its mother’s arms. It’s an abominable job.
Somewhere, parents are still living in a crystalline bubble that is soon going to shatter into a million pieces. They will be removing shards forever.
The consolers will emerge and do their best, but they too will be looking through mud.
The earth will spin and push time further away from this thing, so sudden and done before anyone had a chance to say “not here” “not now” “not to us.” If only earth would reverse spin, to before the chubby hands had reached for the pencil boxes. That would give us just enough time to wrap love’s sash around and around that school building. We could have done that, if we had had just a little more time.
. . .
(written on day of the shooting of the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School)
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