In the kitchen, he cuts hearts from slices of bread,
puts them in Lily’s lunchbox.
“Mommy loves you,” he says.
At night, they huddle up to the laptop,
their video connection to Baghdad,
watching as the audio cuts mid-sentence:
“Mommy loves y-”
and the screen goes black.
Months later, they spot her in the terminal
in fatigues, shouldering her backpack.
She falls to her knees,
clamps her arms around Lily.
“Mommy loves you,” she sobs,
eyes squeezed between fierce tears.
Source: bookfaked.com via Morgan on Pinterest
*Note: This poem was written for Trifecta’s Week Thirty-Three Writing Challenge.
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Very powerful photo – you did it justice.
Awwwww…if you had a twitter button, I would share this…it is an amazing photo/word combo…xo to you and yours.
Emotional yet minimal fuss – prose and picture both! Excellent.
Beautifully composed; moving.
Powerful! The picture brought me to tears.
Beautiful…I’ve only related soldiers with men. Now this poem is an eye-opener…
Great poem.
That picture kills me. I had a friend who deployed to Kuwait for a year when her daughter was in kindergarten. She missed her daughter’s first tooth loss, her first best friend, and her first broken arm. (Well, hopefully last one of those.) So hard for soldiers to be away from family.
Wonderful, very emotional, very bitter-sweet, excellent as always.
Moving, beautiful…you captured it perfectly. Kudos.
All right, no fair! Making grown men cry, you should be ashamed.
Well done though.
Powerful picture.
Fantastic!!
A story repeated in so many homes…I fear…a fine poem IMHO.
Extremely touching. Good work.
I saw that photo when it came out. It spoke volumes and you also wrote a very stirring poem in light of what goes on in that part of the world.
Another gem…pure genius!
Wow! I cried like a baby! Powerful!
Very powerful writing. You are magnificent at tugging heart strings into the words you share.
Oh wow. That was powerful and brought tears to the surface, although I somehow managed to keep them from falling. Beautiful work. Great use of that image.
This was an emotional read – perfect for the picture. Great job on this one!
Just brilliant emotion provocation.
True story: In 2007 on my way home from LA to Atlanta, I sat next to a young guy in the Army. He hadn’t seen his girlfriend since she became pregnant. After a tour in Iraq he was coming home. He gets off the plane and sees his girlfriend and his now 13 month old son. The baby walks. I cried right along with him.
Amazing poem. Congrats.
Lance, I loved your comment as much as I loved this entry. Scriptor (may I call you Scriptor?), you did a beautiful job as always. Not that the guys have it any easier, but we don’t often think of these scenarios from the mother’s point of view. Well done.
Thanks.
Oh my gosh. It’s 6:30 in the morning & I’m sitting at my desk crying. This was so good and too real.
Feeling more from this post, Scriptor, than just “Like”, but afraid any comment might grow into a way too long rant. I continue to be greatly impressed with your talent.
This is brilliant, Scriptor. It does not cause the sense of shock that many of your poems and shorter pieces do. But it creates conflicting emotions about the dedication of the father, the symbol of the bread, the grain of life, and the heart cut out of the bread relating to the mother soldier in Iraq, the fierceness of a mother hugging her little girl once she comes home, the painful sense of missing that you somehow manage to convey in the poem, the fear created when the computer screen, the link between mother, father, and child goes black–not blank, black. I celebrate your work, as usual.
Oh, wow!!! This brought tears. Hugs
Ya, that is heart wrenching. I held a lung convulsion back with my years of practice. Thanks for the share.
Oh. Tears here too. This goes deeeep.
This is a powerful post–honoring connection. Love it.
-Jennifer