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Twenty and Six

Who can bear to grieve,
all at once, twenty children and six grownups,
much less get busy enough to marginalize the liars
who say guns make babies safe?

Only a liar could ignore the fate
of the Newtown mother who bought
her son an arsenal of guns.

They’re in a better place, it’s said;

Maybe so, but it’s their deadness,
not their whereabouts, that I hold onto –
to imagine the fate of disembodied souls
distracts me from the source of tears.

My beloved sister died 3 months earlier,
and it will be years before I’ve cried enough
and settled matters with her,
whose importance to me is as serious
as a secret shared by children.

Dave Read

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