Break

Minutes before she was a wife

answering that dreadful call

she somehow got down the stairs

leaving the phone bobbing on its cord

she flung through the front door

with disbelief's strength

her guttural pleads

swallowed by the stillness and hush

of the yard

lurching forward onto the

browning January grass,

she pulls on these roots

horror settles itself on her face

fragments of their lawn

escaping between her fisted hands

a mother left alone

as her children look on

eyes and ears uncovered