Three months ago today, an armed young man walked into an elementary school classroom in Connecticut and started shooting. The story that unfolded was one of the most unthinkable, devastating narratives ever to sweep across our nation’s news.
Two days later, I cracked open my black leather journal, as words pounded on my heart to escape. My writing through tragedy was certainly no attempt to make sense of what happened – seeking sense in such a situation seemed and seems impossible. But the words were, in the very least, some meek expression, some watery form of communication from a distant outsider looking in.
As so many of us held our own children tight in the days and nights following the nightmare, asking those unanswerable questions, this poem emerged. If you are here today, I ask that you say a simple prayer for those families still reeling from their unexplainable losses. Then, be intentional about treasuring your own loved ones today. Pause for a hug or a simple “I love you.” Because so often, it’s the little things that mean the world.
Stealing Newtown
The shooter is dead.
The words roll off their tongues
like stones.
“The media is descending
like wolves.” A distant
friend posts on Facebook,
the sentence buried
in a flurry of words –
what to do, how to help,
how to love.
Twenty children dead
eleven days before Christmas.
The shooter is dead.
At bedtime,
my son plays with my hair
while in my head I compose
a poem about guns.
Once he asked me,
what does “die” mean?
I couldn’t answer. Not to
a three-year-old,
let alone
a thirty-year-old.
Still
images and wrong words clang
in my head like steel:
Children shot
in a Kindergarten classroom.
A horrible dissonance of words.
The shooter is dead.
That much rings clear.
