her arm across his chest
In other rooms the children slept
the babies, and the rest
Her eyes came open in the dark
a sense of something wrong
She strained to listen in the night
for sounds that don’t belong
She touched her husband’s shoulder then
to stop his quiet snore
and that’s when they were startled by
the pounding on the door.
Her man sat straight up in the bed,
his feet swung to the floor.
Then came the sound of splintering wood
as they pounded all the more.
She heard her baby start to cry
Her sons stepped to the hall.
Her husband reached and grabbed the gun
kept hanging on the wall.
He shouted to his sons, “Get back”!
and turned towards the bed.
Too late. The masked men held his boys
with pistols at their heads.
They took his gun and bound his hands
and forced him to his knees.
They shot him there beside his bed
despite his woman’s pleas.
God No! she screamed and grabbed a man.
He smashed her to the ground.
Her oldest boy began to fight
but soon they cut him down.
She struggled on the bloody floor
to get back on her feet.
Her boys were gone when she got up,
dragged down into the street.
The last she saw of both her sons
were faces in the glass.
The car pulled slowly from the curb
and took away her past.