What if there was a list?
Of things no one wanted
The emptiness in a room
Blood memory
An unrelenting ache
my baby/my baby/my baby
Cannot be…

Worse than death
Stalking us at every turn
will we be
Safe?

No.
Not this time the children’s story
Man with a song leading us into the mountain
because our parents will not

What?
What is it we have not done?
Have not paid
To the coroner
To the cops
To the teeth of the dog
Who guards this hell we have

become
a houseful of memory
Of a Christmas most like the very first, second and third

When armed men broke through doors to wrest
Babes from nursing

Women who retain with their inmost thoughts each scrap of life
This child
This child
Don’t turn away.