The First Day of Spring

by Nancy Tucker

I thought of the cage of high fences within which I had walked without stooping, stood without hunching, because freedom wasn’t the same as feeling free.

When bad things happened to you, people always said things like ‘Poor you’ and ‘You’re so brave’, and it was meant to make you feel better but usually it just made you feel worse, because you didn’t want to be brave and poor, you just wanted the bad thing not to be happening.

It’s about burying an era. All those times we let the kids play out and thought they were safe, didn’t think a thing like this could happen in the streets. That’s what we’ve really lost. Our innocence.