Carefully I placed my feet one by one down the slippery metal bus steps.
The sun was hot and the day was smiling upon me.
I just had a fantastic day at school.

Excited, I raced home
through the newly cut grass,
across the hot concrete road,
and up onto my wooden porch.

I reached for the glimmering handle to twist
but it twisted itself
and standing in front of me was my mom
with something the weight of an elephant pinning her down.

And then she told me with pain in her eyes,
“Tory died.”
And so now that weight took me
and it was as if the wood below me would collapse.

But something much worse than wood collapsed that day.
And this thing couldn’t be replaced
or healed for a long, long time.

It was something that once made me happy
but now destroyed me.