So far below sadness

If you didn’t read about her,
you’ve read about women like her.
Mothers.
Suddenly without children
to mother.
It’s a horror that plays out
in the news.
A father whose anger
ripped the seam
of the world.
I always want
to look away,
to unknow their faces.
To unhear the moan of something
so far below sadness
it has no name at all.
And yet I know why it’s on the news.
It’s not the sensation
of the crime.
It’s for the mother.
She needs us to shatter
by the millions.
She needs the world
to notice that it has been ripped open.
She needs to believe
that her children can feel this too
as they make their way higher and higher,
all of us strangers around the world
sending a tidal wave of love so vast
it reaches them
and washes away
those final moments
of fear.