By LaDeana Mullinix
The barricade was built on my car
dashboard during my daily drive,
petit Gavroche shot
in the forty-fourth CD.
I left the battlefield of 1832 spinning,
my eyes dampened by Hugo’s words:
The sound of the child hitting the pavement.
Heart-pierced,
I crossed the hospital parking lot
to confront the work day.
Like a giant touching the earth,
Hugo’s phrase distorted my orbit of ordinary –
Now
every door slammed,
every box dropped,
every heavy footfall
and the child fell again.
Against propriety, I touched
a gentleman’s face in our therapy room.
I stared in a baby’s eyes
and briefly forgot where I was.
I adjusted the magnet holding Dave’s youngest,
secured the photo to his locker,
and told him twice
on this day of great battle that his boy is beautiful.
LaDeana Mullinix is a Quaker, a retired occupational therapist, a native Kansan, a Master Gardener and a Master Naturalist. Her poetry and essays have been published in Friends Journal and Slant. Her poetry has been published in one anthology, and two were recently accepted in a forthcoming anthology featuring Ozarks poets, from the University of Arkansas Press.