I am the shadow on the moon at night. I am the lonely wolf howling, that makes your skin crawl and your mouth go dry. I am the hooting owl, I am the black cat. I am the fog, rolling in from the river, that covers your path. I am the wind that whistles around your window pane. I am the tap, tap, tapping that drives your mind insane. I am the monster in your closet, I am the darkness in the corner. I am the witches cackle, I am the soulful mourner, weeping in the night. I am the hair on your neck when a ghost walks by. I am the scarecrow  in the field, among the corn rolls neatly tilled. I am the spider that crawls over your hand. I am the silence that rolls over the land. I am the breath you hold, when you look under your bed. I am the blanket you pull over your head. I am the fears, never said, when you crawl in your bed. I am the dead, laying in their graves, with something left to say. I am your imagination, and I've come to carry you away.

i don’t know if you were in second
or third grade. or what your favorite color was.
i’m not sure if you liked playing dress up or soccer
or if you were an only child or the baby of six.
i don’t who you had a crush on and i’m not even sure of your gender
but what i do know, is that today you were scared because you saw white
and then heard the noise of the explosion, and the screams of the injured
but i’m not sure if had learned yet in school that light travels faster than sound.
i don’t know why you were watching the marathon, but i know that you were excited
and impressed
that all these people were running for twenty-six miles, which happens
to be the distance from your house to your
grandma’s.
i don’t know if you died squeezing tightly to your mother’s hand or
if your last breath was taken alone, while hundreds ran in a flurry around you.
i do know that when you fell to the ground, no longer breathing,
you tripped a wire that pulled out
your father’s heart and sanity.
i know that you hadn’t yet felt someone
trace their lips up the divot of your spine
and i know that you will never get to sneak out of the house at
three am to get drunk in a park.
you will never see the next president or even what your best friend will wear
on his wedding day.
and i am sorry.
i am sorry that someone was sick enough to put
an explosive in the trashcan and let it detonate
i’m sorry that your death was the product of human selfishness and greed.
i am sorry that today you had to feel a warm liquid leak from your body
and that you lost so much of it you
couldn’t bear to keep your eyes open.
i’m sorry that you were eight years old when you died,
and that you barely got a taste of the world before it was snatched out from under you.

When you stand
on this earth
does the ground move?