I can hear them
From the first words I read
Laughter high and smiles wide
Weaving in and out of what they
believe are safe streets
Home
And in the last seconds
of hugs and kisses you don’t
know are the last you’ll ever give
Are the same seconds it takes
for someone to end the
laughter and make wide smiles
turn to the all to familiar screams of
Terror
The seconds it takes to cowardly
drag bodies along a road in a useless
Rage
Leaving another mother to bury her babies
Another mother to look into haunting
open eyes that hold a short lifetime
of black lives that did not matter
Except to those who will bury them
with heavy hearts and searching minds
And those who hear their screams echo
Long after reading the last lines of the report
Odelia Younge 