The Mother Writes to the Murderer: A Letter
byNaomi Shihab Nye
To you whose brain is a blunt fist
pushed deep inside your skull
whose eyes are empty bullets
whose mouth is a stone more speechless
than lost stones at the bottoms of rivers
who lives in a shrunken world where nothing blooms
and no promise is ever kept
To you who face I never saw but now see
everywhere the rest of my life
You don’t know where she hid her buttons
arranged in families by color or size
tissue-wrapped in an oatmeal...