The following poem is written from the perspective of me as a mother in mourning, but it is dedicated to anyone who has lost someone or something.
a day
There will come a day,
as days come
and days fade,
when I will look at the
walls after I walk through
the double doors to pick up
my son from his elementary
school. One day, I’ll look at other
bulletin boards in his school
again just as I am able to look at
the bulletin boards in my middle
school. Because Mary leaves her
lamb in dreams, and she never makes it
to her brother’s elementary school.
Once upon a time,
if such a time
ever did exist,
she leaned from car seat when
her brother, Hayes, got out
of the car, and said,
“I’m going to school here next year.”
There will come a day,
when a shallow shade
of once upon a time,
appears again on my face,
as I see my son achieve his dreams.
There will come a day
when I won’t change
the channel as a
commercial shows a mom with
the latest phone taking pictures
of little girls in pink tutus with a
smile that resembles mine from
once upon a time. When days
darken and I scour the list of
chores to do: pick up trash on
the side of the road, and move
more limbs spread by a tornado
less painful than the storm of
her loss through which we
have survived. There will come a
day when my dreams recede and
she reveals the face of her soul
to me. Because in a dream, she
sleeps in the bed between her
father and me, and her loose
curls spiral across the comforter.
She smiles. When I wake to a
red zone tornado moving inside
my stomach, I remember the dream
of her beside me.
By Rebecca T. Dickinson
Corrie's Season 