We feel like we know you,
Fellow Midwesterner.
Earnest, like our congregation
of displaced farmers from Kansas.
The moral clarity—simple—a glass of cool water.

We didn’t know you.
The story is one told by storymakers,
Who would later become politicians.

You didn’t make yourself the center of the story,
So we won’t make you now.

Still, I never knew anyone died that day.

When we talk about you,
We mention the liberation theologians
Who knew there’s price to pay.
Alex Pretti, too.

We don’t know how to honor,
But we look
Sometimes, with the clearest of eyes,
At that picture of you, holding the kids’ hands.