Eight Days after the School Shooting

It's called mortality salience.
I know, I study this stuff.
It's anxiety tightening around my eyes
as I see campus for the first time since,
looking into eyes bloodshot in exhausted faces,
tears at their corners,
bodies bleeding in our fretful sleep.

I scan the paper and see we are yesterday's news,
reminder that students shot dead in classrooms are everyday sights.

Mortality salience.
I scan the landscape for last week's memorial flowers on the schoolhouse steps
but the steps are bare.
The ghostly memory of last week's lit white candles lingers;
the classroom building itself,  a visual monument to death.

Everywhere I look, a reminder.
These eyes remember what they didn't see.

Mortality salience.
The picture in the back of my eyeballs haunts me.

Unexpectedly traveling too close to the edge,
and looking down.

© Christine S. Davis, 2019




Comments

Post a Comment

Your comments and feedback are welcome. Please be sure to be respectful.

Popular posts from this blog

Letter to my future self

I didn't think this storm would ever end, but, in the end, it was just like all the other storms of life, louder perhaps, deafening really. Some people died, some unexpectedly, some jobs were lost. Were you surprised by the urban dustbowl mentality? Some necessary things weren't. Wounds festered openly. Surprising connections held. Some egos lost, after a time. Some courage remained. Terror and boredom, the have-have not divide widened. We became our brothers' keepers. I wonder. Yet, the lizards lay in the sun and the birds still sing. © Christine Salkin Davis, 2020
Read more
  A is for Apple I made this hand-painted watercolor alphabet book for my grandson, Jonah. Several people asked if I would make it available for people to buy. I'm very excited to offer this book for sale. It would make a perfect gift for the young children in your life. You can order it at this link: A is for Apple
Read more

Still the Birds Sing

The bug looks like a small black Volkswagen driving in circles on the wooden railing; suddenly, a flying car. The birds sing and the wind blows and the sun shines and the dandelions grow in the recently cut grass; yellow dots pock the green grass. A female cardinal swoops to the bird feeder, then a finch, reds and browns and grays and seed debris drops down, and the birds sing, melodious. The sky milks blue and clouds float and branches sway from the trees. The birds multitudinous sing antiphonally--           call, response, recall. Light shadows the ground. Still the birds sing. © Christine Salkin Davis, 2020
Read more