When another school

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.

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