Imagine.
Guns
Returned
In dribs & drabs
In a steady stream
As swift-moving rapids
As a thundering waterfall,
By homeowners, shopkeepers,
Teachers, doctors, funeral directors
By students, athletes, hunters, gangbangers,
From closets, desk drawers, concealed holsters
Into an ever-expanding landfill, ever-rising scrapheap
Adorned with full and half-empty ammunition magazines,
Weighing heavily atop hallowed and sacred ground below
Amplifying hideous, bloodletting, horrific screams, mutilated bodies
Broken-hearted families, grief-stricken friends, outraged communities
Shattered creative lives, shattered lifetime dreams, scattered Divine light.
Imagine.
Atop this mountain
Of fear and wounded pride
Stands an angelic figure in full halo
Radiating from the inside out: love, peace and joy
With her ever-present, irrepressible, from ear-to-ear-wide smile,
Hadiya Zaymara Pendleton.