She stood not in prayer, not near Heaven,
But before steel that leads to the grave.
Not a road but a parting was given,
Where the living could whisper and wave.
She begged nothing. No breath and no pleading
Just her fingers in metal red-wet.
As she once held him, wordless and bleeding,
So she held now love’s final duet.
“Step aside!” they barked like a warning,
As if love were just junk in their path.
And they tore her away in the morning
Like a soldier is torn in the wrath.
She collapsed. Not a sound. No confession.
No prayer. No stars in the sky.
Just the engine a numb, dull procession
Rolling off toward death, not goodbye.
And he… did not turn. Did not shiver.
Not from fear but from what he had lost.
No more window. No road. Not a sliver
Of the spring, or the silence it cost.
Just a number. A gun. And a jacket.
Death on call, like a dog in the field.
And her death not from grief, but the racket
Of a scream that her body concealed.
They were taken. The ground will not wonder
Not who, not for what, not why.
Even heaven is locked under thunder.
Even shadows
refuse
to lie.
Inspired by a real story. A mother stands between her son and the machine that wants him. She loses.
But this poem remembers her.
