Laura Mullen

That won’t come in a voice that won’t ever deepen

Won’t ask for the keys to the car or a later curfew or

If a friend can stay for dinner maybe sleep over

Saying Don’t worry mom It’s okay grandpa no

No voice no friend no desire for a long dress or

A lipstick or a backpacking trip up some river

No river whatever they didn’t and won’t experience

Doesn’t exist no moments of pleasure no pictures

Of flowers or the view from a world erased

Hold a space remember you can’t

Remember all the unsaid words they might

Have said urgent speaking of love of anger

Hard words and Honey I couldn’t hear you take

Your hands away from your face and tell me again

Please here’s a tissue a transient vision dissolving

Into emptiness dream lost promise another American

“Tragedy” added to the long the ever longer list

Mark the absences stillnesses negative spaces

Numbered for each of the unlived lives follow

The unwalked paths cross the undanced dark

Floors watch the sifting fade of everything

They might have touched see the actual empty

Bed doesn’t need to be imagined nor the real

Closet full of clothes no one grows out of small

Shoes and shelves of treasure bright trash

To give away get rid of or hold hurting onto

Books no one will ever show you they can

Read stories no one asks to hear again

Hold a few words up against the silence

Seeping out from this town into the country

From a classroom become a crime scene

Measure the growing no the widening never

Muting the names buried under other names

Weigh unending sorrow and count the years

Our murdered children won’t shape or share

Mark the future missing ours was theirs