—for Daniel Davis Aston

 

The news flashes a photo of you,
the one you posted with your top surgery scars,
your head thrown back in joy, more yourself, more alive—

You are no longer here.
You among five beautiful souls
murdered at Club Q
just after midnight.

Your mother tells the reporter how you’d just moved,
how you’d found your place, your circle. She weeps.

I think of my own son
swimming into the ocean, shirtless in his swim trunks
for the first time. More himself, more alive, the joy of that day—

Don’t politicize this, people say.

But we mothers can’t wake from this nightmare,
they’ll never stop coming
for our sons.

And grief presses heavy hands
on our heads, night’s numb pill taken,
we mothers swim in the dark,
where sons are safe.

---

Elizabeth Mercurio (she/her) is the author of the chapbooks Doll and Words in a Night Jar. She earned an MFA from The Solstice Low-Residency Program. Her work has appeared in Ample Remains, The Wild Word, Thimble Magazine, Vox Populi, and elsewhere. She was recently named a finalist in the Cordella Press Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize and the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Poetry Prize. You can find her at: https://www.elizabethmercurio.com/.

---