I wonder where they wrote my name
and whether it was engraved
or casually noted in pen.
How long would it take
to write the names
of every dutiful taxpayer
along a sleek metal frame?
Or did they write them somewhere inside?
Like the first page of a poetry anthology
where they list
contributors—
name
after name
after name,
yours
and mine.
But one hundred and seventy-five little girls
didn’t have time
to flip through a shiny volume
picking the rhymes they liked.
Still, I wonder if one of them
might have spotted my name—
scrawled on shrapnel,
a split-second vision
before her pink backpack was thrown.
I can’t get that picture out of my mind
Of all the little backpacks piled
and the blood.
As a mother, I would have liked
to send those little girls a song
on lined paper,
Perhaps carried by a homing pigeon
Or a dove.
They might have opened it in class
and said,
Look, teacher, look —
A mother from somewhere far away
sends us love.
But the war fiends take our names—
the names our children call us,
the names our mothers whispered
to us in the dark,
our hearts, our souls,
and they write them like a blasphemous edict
on the cold body
of a Tomahawk
So that when another mother bends
to cradle
only empty space,
I know
it is my fault.