We Tried

We tried.
Oh, how we tried. 
Plans put on hold. 
Social circle weaned
to us, plus two, sometimes plus four. 
We learned to live in this new world. 

We tried.
At first we doubted and disbelieved.
And then we raged. 
Learning to trust
and mistrust, fissures fused or formed.
We sought solace in those we knew were our own. 

We tried. 
Getting back into our work. 
Exhausted and run down.
Returning to jobs that we never really left
only to find they transformed while we weren’t away. 
We kept going even though what we knew had become unrecognizable. 

We tried. 
To keep her from this.
To shelter her from the storm.
Our love and fierceness 
a barrier more solid than steel, we thought.
We watched it shatter before our very eyes and were brought to our knees.

We tried. 
To hide in plain sight. 
It found us – of course it found us. 
How do you tell a child
it didn’t have to be this way and that it had to be this way.
We will watch and touch and listen until it is over and even after, forever. 

We tried.
For ourselves. 
For our family. 
For humanity we tried
and we will still try because we belong to each other. 
We will forge a new world together because we must.