I feel like being snarky about SCOTUS not hearing the baby Veronica case and not intervening to prevent thousands of prisoners’ premature release from prisons in California.
But mostly I have to acknowledge the heartbreaking truth–children are treated like chattel and our system does not care enough to protect them.
I know this because I too lost my baby Veronica. Hurts. Hurts the children.
In the winter of 2009 I wrote out victim’s impact statements for my children.
Pages never read, found or included in the record.
I flinch every time the weight of these statements is mentioned in other cases.
What happened to ours and why?
So I decided to write them again:
Short Form
Victim’s Impact Statement
no words.
Long Form
Victim’s Impact Statement
Look me in the eye
And tell me
Why my grief is so insubstantial to you
Oh judge
Just bits of paper in the wind
Gone
Just missing…
All our intimate
words for sorrow and loss
Carrying Light 