Someone designed
a monument
to a stray cop bullet
that broke through walls
and killed
a child asleep
in a crib,

couldn’t decide 
on which city
needed it most
as there were so many
to choose from,

cast a giant version
of it and placed it
in the dead geographical center
of the USA

where it was supposed
to become
the singular idol
of all who saw it,

its shadow coloring
all the land around it
for thousands of miles,

where it stood until one day
people began to ask
why the statue had been made,
why the statue had been placed so centrally 
as to shade everything so deeply,

and most of all,
why honor the bullet
and not the child,
why the bullets
and not children,
why build such
a statue at all
instead of building a wall
between our babies
and such
hard, officially blessed
Death.

The people reached
to tear it down
even as some cried out
for the vanishing beauty
of the bullet’s hue.

The people reached up
and pulled it down
even as some cried out
for the loss of memory
they feared would come.

The people turned their backs
upon the empty pedestals
even as some cried out 
for the loss of their big, beautiful bullet
and the fear shadow it had cast
for so long.