First skin shrivels
without touch. Parent's
palm to baby's back
an initial prayer
for safe-keeping, offered
in heart's rhythm.
How maimed the hand
that releases the leash
on a dog trained to maul.
Strokes fur to praise puncture,
urges sic, not stay.
Fingers turned incisors
on blue fields of fifty
rip red strips
on a father's back,
pierce our beating core.
A member of a foster family for newborn wards of the state of Illinois as she grew up, Michelle DeRose witnessed first-hand how simple touches soothed some of the many infants her mother nurtured. A life-long dog-lover and -rescuer, she still wonders if she and her husband rescue dogs or they rescue them. The perversion of this most basic of communication--love and calm conveyed when one living being gently touches another--blatantly revealed in ICE's actions in Washington state against Wilmer Toledo-Martinez should repulse us all.