Blood stains - Virginia Francisco

[Larry Robinson]

Blood stains
 
I´ve washed many shirts
worn by my kids over the years.
Some sticky with chocolate after birthday parties
others sprinkled with funny water colors
or ink-blotched, mud-splashed,
grass-tinted, yoghurt splurted.
But no amount of washing prepared me for
a blood-stained shirt.
My teenage son had been out at night.
There had been a fight.
And those kindergarten boys with their cute backpacks
turned overnight into beastly males.
I had this image of all the other mothers like me
washing the blood from their son´s shirt in the morning
unbelieving, appalled
at those wounds that no amount of water
or silent tears, could rinse.
 
	- Virginia Francisco