Showing posts with label Remembering Baily. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Remembering Baily. Show all posts

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Memorial Stones


Image URI: http://mrg.bz/URIXxH

He's gathering up,
one by one, and placing,
the memorial stones.
I can hear it
all through the house.

I press my palm
to the door,
feel his heartbeat
in sobs calling out
from the other side--

ruins beautiful
for the remembering,

and whisper
a mother's prayer
for grief too big
for these hands alone.


© 2016 Jennifer Wagner

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

After Suicide


He still goes over to his house,
sits in his room,
says a lifetime of goodbyes to ashes
--what's left
when the oxygen of hope thins,
choked out by the rasping fire-of-lies
believed at just-turned twenty.


Remembering often in stories,
as the living do
of the dead--
he laughs,
cries,
swears,
breaks, bitterly.


And when reads to me what he writes,
how it is to lose a brother,
memorializing what was,
he ends it
the only way he can.


You don’t know what you’ve done to me.



© 2015 Jennifer Wagner


At the end of August my son's best friend since he was 11 years old committed suicide at the age of 20. A crater-sized hole has been created, and though I know it is a pain that will remain for the rest of his life, I pray for it to lessen for him and for all those who loved Baily. He is greatly missed.