Your son is going to go missing
and leave his dog
and belongings behind,
a voice in your head
whispers, but you ignore
it like the gnat buzzing in your ear.

When he doesn’t show up
for supper or bedtime,
and his hound is asleep
on his bed next to his duffle bag
full of clean clothes, you imagine
a woodchipper grinding his bones,
a coyote chomping on his leg,
his truck ablaze in the desert.

By morning, your husband
is driving the freeways
as you leave voice messages
on your son’s cellphone like all
those other parents whose
sons vanished. But the voice
says: he survived four decades,
two decades deployed
on a submarine in enemy waters,
and a deadly pileup on black ice,
he will survive this and he does.

You find him safe and sound
and he returns to the submarine.
But the voice in your head
never tells you that just a few
months later two Navy officers
will stand in your living room,
their words fogging up your
windows and your brain.
                        

Gunfire pops and sirens scream
as police cars and an ambulance
whiz by the grocery store
where my husband shops
in the small Idaho town 
where our kids were raised decades ago.

There’s been a shooting
at the middle school, the clerk says
hanging up his cell phone
as he bags the bread and milk.
A sixth grade girl just open fired
in the hallway and outside.

My wife is a nurse at the hospital,
the pharmacist says as he fills 
the prescription. The janitor
was released. They’ll keep
the students overnight. Bullets
were removed from their arms and legs.

The shooter is only eleven. My sister
was in her class at the other school
before she was suspended,
the Hospice CNA says as she soaps
my mother-in-law in the shower
for the first time since the stroke.

My brother says he was standing
in the hallway and the girl pulls
a pistol out of her backpack 
and shoots him in the leg,
relates the nurse as she listens
to the heart of my mother-in-law.

The teacher who talked down the girl
and held her until the police came
is the daughter of your neighbor,
the hairdresser, who makes house calls,
says as she shampoos my mother-in-law’s
white hair over the kitchen sink.

The sheriff chewed me out for telling
CBS my daughter was no wimp. 
The neighbor laughs from his ATV 
as he watches the young farmers
placing irrigation pipe in the pasture.
Couldn’t have them reporting fake news.

My grandsons witnessed the shooting.
Good thing she was a lousy shot,
whispers the retired teacher who brings
my mother-in-law a hoagie
after she misses the Daughters
of the Pioneers last meeting of the year.

I dropped to the floor after I heard gunfire,
proclaims the eighth grader as he puts
the pickle on the kitchen table.
My teacher yelled Run and I ran
to the high school yelling Gun,
Shooting and they went on lockdown.

Her sister prayed don’t let the shooter
be my sister and I said it can’t be her
because she’s the nicest girl, but it was her,
says the sixth grader ripping open 
the Lays potato chip bag.

We’re not supposed to talk about it,
they say but that’s all they talk about
because they can’t unhear the sound
of gunshots still ringing in their ears.
                        

He trips on a tangle
of cats and cords,
falls backwards,
twisting an arm
behind his back.
A blood clot
big as a baseball
forms on his bicep.
Under the anesthetic 
he is a teenager batting
and burying balls 
in baskets and holes
and packing a pigskin.
When he awakens
he is surprised 
to find out he is alive
and his arm
is still attached
to the body he has
worn for eight decades.