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.
I wrote this before I learned the name and *** of the victim.