All be damned, I'm soaking in the after light of a wonderful night,
and the phone rings and I shudder.

Her fingers might have curled around a paintbrush or a violin,
her voice rung out with sweet ballads or spoken with passion
to a weary and broken people. Her feet walked city streets or hiked
worn paths in green mountains.

But she is quiet, no voice to protest her future.
She is quiet, no one fought for her life to be given.

Heart breaks, breaks along the same lines it's broken a hundred times before.
Each time trying to heal and each time ripped along the same lines.
Oh, what a tender piece of flesh it has become.

Child lost, and does your body ache for it?
Hope spat, do you mourn for it?
Breath smothered, did you weep for it?

The force of this blow was unexpected,
the depth of loss much deeper,
the news unwanted to my ears.

Holy Father, if you are so good and so merciful,
so tender to your children, so swift to defend
the cause of the fatherless and the widow,
to uphold the righteous and fight for the innocent,
where does this child's story lie?

Where have Truth and Peace
and Justice run to? Why have they abandoned these streets, found no
rest in our homes?
Death is the whoremonger that has cast them out, she has lied too many times
and stolen the unwanted.

Let no breath be unwanted by us anymore.
Why does this feel so near?
I will weep, even if no one else has.