The Mother Writes to the Murderer: A Letter by Naomi Shihab Nye

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...