For Victoria

In memory of Victoria Soto, teacher, 29 years old, killed during the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on December 14, 2012. Victoria protected her students by hiding them in a closet and telling the gunman they were in the gym. He shot her and moved on, leaving the children alive. Twenty children and six adults died in the shooting rampage. Remember them.

For Victoria

Better angel,

Lie to death to buy them while his trigger

eats the only space between.

Clock seconds race a last length of your life’s time;

how does it sound? Wrong fireworks, glass, long silence,

fragile human body splinters.

Did you believe in God by any name? No,

I feel the same.

But if we are asking where was His Face, even so?

It is There. For when you sacrifice this life for those

You.

Are.

God.

Eleison, have mercy on each other.