Childless Mother

I think of you, remember you, and wonder if you think of them, your flooded pearls

Long lost in yesterday's news

Does your womb ache when you hold close to you tattered, dog-eared pictures

Of baby faces, cherub round with dimpled smiles?

Are there days you pine regret thick in sorrow and clarity

Intentional actions that robbed adulthood from strapping boys

Who would have, now, stood taller than you in the summer light?

Newspaper faded, distanced and forgotten, others have followed your form,

America's headlines past long years ago,

In that silver watery grave your Mazda a casket made

Two toddlers belted, bloating, while you crafted lies of black men

Covering your bloodless tracks while the oxygen bubbled from open windows

Suffocating your flesh for a lover's caress

False tears and bad acting filled the television,

Ex-husband pained, believing your version, open faith did you take

I watched from miles away, glimpsing my own children, same age, same look

Repeating dismay echoed as the car was pulled muck free and drained

Handcuffed and deadlocked, community threw rotten food at you

Your confession a progression in a theatrical view

Keys locked you inside your cage, keeping safe from the outraged

Suicide watch prevented demise already inflicted to infants

Are your slow nights haunted by sweet, young voices?
Do they come and tickle you with cold dead fingers while you slumber

Reminding you that you made sacrifice of them, stroking your hair, forgivingly

Teasing you of tomorrow's 'could have been'?

Do you cling tightly to the darkness, hoping intense Angels will fade

As you use both hands to cover your ears from their songs sung on sweet lips?

For some, your actions have been buried, resting on a hilltop with flowers and bow,

But I remember you, Susan, your coy eyes alive with banter, mascara flowing cheeks,

Your venom stained pleas and shaking shoulder sobs

A tight place in my heart is held for your throw away children, the home movies

Waltz through my mind's eye as I look at my boys' growth, a ghost of your own

Creator and Destroyer, I will not forget you either as I ponder your existence

Cold, silent, alone in your sorrows, too good for you a condition a death would resolve.

Live! Live to be elderly, bent and broken,

Live with the ghosts you birthed and the waterfalls of tears!

Think often of eyes brown or green, trusting you to keep safe and thrive, snuffed instead

Those lights bright with life, pouring those sticky images of your deeds

As those who recall that fate leave roses, fresh daisies, beside the water's edge

And put to words lives that barely breathed, drowned, and silenced too young...