If you didn’t read about them,
you’ve read about people like them.

Parents, suddenly
without children
to parent.

It’s a horror that plays out
in the news.

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.

But the parents need us
to shatter
by the millions.

They need the world
to notice that it has been ripped open.

They need to believe
that their 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.