shooting crawls
across the bottom
of the screen, she scrambles
upstairs to Dylan’s
den, where she hugs his mended
bear— fixates on his class
photo—the blue
of his eyes over a toothless
grin, never to
replicate the square
jaw, straight
teeth of his teenage
twin. Her fingers relive
his skin and high-pitched
echoes over
pudding, Dad
home from work, another soccer
goal. Her grip tightens
and crumbles to the rug where grief
binds them.
About the Poem
I wrote this in response to the Oxford High School mass shooting, thinking back to the parents of a little boy killed at Sandy Hook.
About the Author
Karen Wolf turns to poetry to try to better understand a world that is becoming more violent with each revolution.