Connecticut
by eatonhamilton
I feel, like so many people today, mute and broken by what, again, has happened. Treasure your babies.
After Columbine, I wrote this poem:
Trenchcoat
It was so hard to let her go off to high school
that spring. I longed to take her wrist
and drag her with me instead
She made me drop her two blocks from school
Low on her hip she
flicked her fingers to rid herself of me
It wasn’t just Columbine
Children were dying video gun deaths
all over the US
Teens were being snapped in two in car accidents
breakable as bread sticks
or taken to lonely woods
and crumpled like test papers
Later that summer at the swimming pool
teen boys tossed my daughter, their football,
arms newly strong, voices
loud, sure, traveling out over the heads of toddlers
and kids in grade school
moms with infants at breast
She fought for footing on the bottom of the pool
came up sputtering
giggling
happy to be vanquished
