The Newspaper Today

By Zelene Pineda Suchilt

Today
a woman like you

at least from the outside

prepared two little children for a bath

a boy and a girl

took off their cotton under garments

drew water

while the kids danced back and forth

because it was autumn and it was cold outside

once they were in
She stabbed them
then,
She stabbed herself.

Newspapers wrote of the children’s mother,
their father
they had lost
a daughter and a son
no word on the nanny

so I think of you

and the late nights that bled into the morning
the day that turned to years
of late checks
the smell of Clorox in your fingers
exposure festering on your skin
and no time to heal the wound
and the wounds
passed on
to
me

the paper today, reads like my secret revenge