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The Order of Protection

By Brad O’Neill

The wind it wisps through the blood soaked hair,

The smell of death is on the air.

A paper crackles in the wind ,

swaying forward and back and forward again.

Held by a hand that won’t descend,

Frozen outward awkward almost pretend.

The paper waves like a flag on Memorial Day,

Signifying the soldiers who have past away.

But this flag it waves for a mom,

Sprawled out dead strangely calm.

Her child s body nearby lies,

No tears come from dead eyes.

The detectives look but they need no clues,

They know what happened it’s a common ruse.

The paper waving in the wind,

Was an order of protection.

The father he laughed or maybe cried,

As his woman and child violently died.

The detectives won’t ever know,

Perhaps they will never care.

The suspect’s body is a few feet further,

Slumped over the easy chair.

The detective is startled as a stranger screams,

He has heard it before but it still stings.

The mother of the deceased has arrived,

She sees her baby and her grandbaby robbed of life.

He makes a motion to restrain,

But it’s too late to spare the pain.

The image is forever burned,

The victim’s mother’s stomach churns,

 Now nightmares, to this scene will return.

The neighbor says the boyfriend came,

The victim warned him but just the same.

The boyfriend laughed in her face,

When she held up the paper and pulled her mace.

The boyfriend cursed and she yelled,

The boyfriend slapped her as she held.

The paper it was supposed to be,

An order of protection for all to see.

As he slapped her once and again,

She pulled the mace and sprayed him then.

He screamed in pain and pulled out a gun,

 That is when he shot her son.

Through the mace and the tears,

The boy tried to help his mom,

The boy was brave but to young,

And the boyfriend found him with the gun.

The mother’s heart was already dead,

When the bullet passed through her head.

This is the last detail the witness could recall,

As he told the detective, “I dove behind a wall.”

The other witnesses’ accounts all agreed,

The detective gathered the evidence no one would need.

The coroner began to remove the remains,

A neighbor and the victim’s mother bathed in pain.

The dead mothers hand went into the bag,

The protection order still held, it shouldn’t have been a white flag.