The Women Plant While Mourning for Lost Children

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It isn’t that one child means more than another child or all
But if it’s my child my heart can’t see beyond
It freezes
The motion of Earth freezes.

I was meant to love all children
But I am constructed only to protect my own with my life

I would bear a thousand rapes if that’s what it meant to save my child’s life
Or die on the cross.
This is the way the world ends, Mr. Eliot
With a mother’s last grief for her dying child.