A mother’s lament at Easter

Many mother’s have lost children 

After a decade of peace

On Easter Sunday , in Sri Lanka,

Many more children’s lives were lost

A mother, a wife no more

Just a woman, trying to make

Sense of what happened

Reliving, regretting, each second of that dark day of doom

21st April, 2019

they sauntered casually

In to the house of God

Carrying in backpacks, 

The destinies of my children, 

Still in prayer…..

Destinies that exploded,

Laying bear the fragility of my island paradise

A thousand what ifs circling,

What if we had gotten up late, what if we hadn’t gone 

, what if, what if, what if………

Trying to hold on to fading pictures

Trying to let go of memories of laughter, joy that once filled a home

Trying to live through 

A raging battle within 

sanity and insanity

Waking up in a sudden cold sweat, 

Screams that pierce the heart

The tears that dry up, only to flow over and over again,

Never wanting sleep to end 

So that in dreams I can see them, 

they don’t visit, though, No

Not even in my dreams

No matter how much I will it

Do I hear their voices?

Are they here? 

Just empty spaces

Within and without

Where they once were

Justice for my family

Punishment for the killers

Yes, on some days, I wish for that……

Most days I wonder why I was spared and they were taken

And I live now, do I?

How do I do that? 

4 April, 2021

Sashikala Premawardhane

Dedicated to those brave survivors of the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks of 21/04/2019, Sri Lanka 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.