Twenty one 16×20’s nailed to posts.
Below each, piles of flowers
three feet, four feet high,
stuffed toys, teddy bears, notes,
signs, posters, prayer candles.
In the neighborhood streets around,
children of all ages chalking
pictures and notes to their lost friends…

It is all too soon.

They are hollowlost, ripped out.
They are still outside their bodies
from shockwave grief.
Still, they come to pray
to leave things teachers
and little kids might like to have
to write how much they were loved
how much they will be forever missed
to light candles hoping for angelsong…

I take the pictures.
I make the videos.
I write the words.
I look at them all in my quiet.
Make decisions about the when
and where of them.
The ones no one but I will see
have a long building deep in the background,
a building with giant boarded up
windows all around.
A building that can’t possibly hide
the atrocities inside. The horrors inside. I know.
They know. The world knows.
But, I can’t bring myself to show it.
I can’t bring myself to show it.
I look at them more than
a few times a day still.
We all know
and I don’t want to show you.

We smell the flowers
from the bottoms of the piles
purifying, rotting in the heat
under the thick layers above them.
All the children smile
in their giant photos above them.
The teachers smile
in their giant photos above them.
It is raw and poignant and unmentionable.
It breaks our spines.
The town crawls on all their fours,
limps, frail… irreparable.

The blown out, deadly silent windows scream
all boarded up deep in the background…

I will not show it… I will not show you…