The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Dedicado con dolor para David Muñoz y 

Santos Rodríguez, that did not reach. 

Also the unknown who also did not.

How many more children will not reach?

Say children, 

‘cause they’re so fine 

delicate spider web, unfolded dreams 

they will not reach.

Limbs tender – as those of a young flower, 

crushed forever before spring.

Smooth skin. 

Soft and bronzed honeydew. 

The sun has kissed your forehead goodbye, 

gently taking all the warmth of your small body, 

and – your body is falling cold, 

against the box casket of death.

Say children, 

‘cause they’re born into a barrio of bare reality. 

Yet they live their lives inquisitively. 

Seeking, spreeing free butterfly, 

caught in the net of human cruelty.

Always on –trying– trying to find, 

I, who, me. 

Who am I? 

Me of a spirit unknown.

Say man, 

animal of fears, 

of gun, that boldly and unquestionably, 

Rake! The human right of life –from the children.

You did not think, 

but killed! 

Now the child shall never reach.

Did not mean to kill! 

Accident?

Your white racist mind is clouded 

with cancerous smoke. 

You did not seek to understand, 

but acted as an animal would, 

in a jungle of survival.

But, the children, 

the children are defenseless, 

naked bodies, that bleed, 

from the piercing of your intentional bullet 

that blindly shocks their open eyes, 

then shutter gently, 

and finally, 

close.

This child will not reach.