Number 27

To Uvalde

Like the dividers in my pill holder, I dose
each day’s news, flipping open a lunchtime
headlines’ check, thirty minutes for nightly
reports, yet today all my head sees is wooden,
blue-robed, Santo Nino statued next to pairs
of children’s shoes left by so many for him
to continue travels, to continue comfort.

How many times you and I have knelt,
rubbed, scooped santuario dirt among
no-longer strangers crying and crossing
themselves, that one time when exiting
to the parking lot you told me we were
witnessing grief, four women embroidered
and bowtied singing Mariachi to a family
bowed, my high school Spanish ear extracting
no puedo/a mi mansión volver as we intruded—

and here, motherless, I bend to the kitchen
floor when I remember behind closed eyes,
dark grey, the beautiful pain of each held,
strummed note not mine but theirs, all
the live-streamed images, press conferences,
my mind placing elementary schoolers, maybe
on a field trip, back there on asphalt outside
Holy Child of Atocha Chapel, hands linked,
swaying, pushing air, their bodies up, away,
a buoyant Red Rover formation circling
beside the archway’s hearted, tin cross.

Photo by Anslee Wolfe.