The tiny starfish hands pressed on both my cheeks. Her heart trembling in her sea-washed, sky-gray eyes. Little delicate lips pressed in an adult line of barely-controlled emotion. The *****, dully-shining tear streaks that drew paths through her freckles. Butterfly kisses, I would tease her as I swept her into the salty air.

I have to focus. I steel myself, dragging memories from the back of my clouded mind and setting them before my fogging eyes. I refuse to let them slip away again. I could never live with myself if I did.
I had said something to her. Ignore the fact that I can’t remember what it was. She smiled through the tears, her laugh a reminder that she wasn’t the adult she was trying desperately to be - that I was forcing her to be. I had wrapped her in my arms for the last time, lifted her toddler body easily from the sand. She held onto me tighter than I thought she could - another underestimation, I suppose. My neck started running with her tears. I hummed her song through a choked throat.

“Momma loves you.”

Fairly standard, as far as last words go. But sufficient. I am satisfied. Flashes of that day, the departure, boarding the ship, lacking the strength to watch my daughter fade into nothing behind me, spin past my eyes with increasing speed. Funny, everything else has slowed. The water makes my limbs sluggish, the ropes twining like lazy snakes around them. The footsteps of my heartbeat have slowed their pace, leaving longer and longer pauses of silence in their wake. Even the glittering light, what there is of it, is lethargic in its reaches to my nearly-blind eyes.
With all the salt-water clouding my vision, dimming my memories, I could swear the sea knows of my loss. It must: it is weeping with me.

An arm hung across the rubble,
draped like a broken swan neck,
decorated by intricate patterns of blood and dust.

I couldn't have known who the arm belonged to, but in that moment
I was sick
to my stomach
with devastating surety.

Those were the fingers that had twined through mine in gestures of
love and
desperation,
painted my arms
in strokes of comfort, and of loneliness.

The palm that had confidently gripped a weapon,
and had carried groceries
into the house.
Palms that had pressed hopelessly against rain-washed glass and
gently
against tearstained cheeks.
Those palms that willingly cradled my uneasy heart.

And the arm.
The arms that stretched into
the sparkling star-strewn sky,
the grey and
pouring rain,
the sun-baked air rippling in waves across that embrace.  
Arms that had wrapped around a struggling body
with grim purpose and
aching heart,
softly beneath a wiggling puppy and its
pink kisses,
easily against the warmth of my breakable ribs.

I saw the broken swan and I felt something heavy,
maybe my heart,
slip from limp fingers and
break
into glittering shards
decorated by intricate patterns of blood and dust.

There’s something burning on the
Blackout strip of highway.
Light and movement
Frozen in a momentary
Dance.

Her eyes are wide and full
Of the emptiness that
Looms before her.

Nothing moves
And I step with it,
Carefully
Through the
Shards of suspended glass
That slice open the freezing night
Air.

Metal is bent and crushed
Against itself.
But for now, the
Ripple of the
Fatal shockwave
Stands
Still.

Her eyes are wide and full
Of the light tearing,
Imposing
Through the windshield
Into what remains of her mind.

I feel the moment
Of absolute stillness
Beginning to slip and I open the
Door.
Detach her soul with a
Kiss gentler
Than Life could ever
Offer
To save her from
The crushing mayhem.

Take her into my arms. She
Sleeps, as they all do,
Her head against my chest.
I turn away.
I leave the scene of force and
Fragility and, with my
Only mercy
Cradled in my arms,
Have no power but to let the
Scene behind me
Attack itself and
Consume.

I would kiss you
until the stars threw themselves from the heavens
and begged to be clothed in flesh and blood
that they might burn
as brightly as we.

Ten
nearly flawless lines,
made for
both bending
and
breaking