"Twenty-Six" (In Connecticut)

It was just another day, just an ordinary day
people living, learning, working, making plans...
The holidays around the bend, winter's chill just setting in
for Twenty-Six, a fateful day begins...

Classrooms filled with Children, hats and coats and books
construction paper "art" hung everywhere...
Story time and ABC's, show and tell and spelling bees,
songs to learn before the Christmas fair...

Parents rushing off to work, or heading back to quiet homes
chores to do, meals to plan and calls to make..
pine trees strapped to roofs of cars, mail bags filled with Christmas cards,
shopping lists and wrapping gifts and pies to bake...

It was just another day, just an ordinary day
for all except one very broken man...
for him this day would be, the day he'd live in infamy
so determined now to execute his plan...

No one saw him coming, no one had a chance
to beg or reason, no chance to run away
when madness would arrive, and Twenty-Six would die
hunted down as nothing more than human "prey"

No this would not be just a day, like any other day
this day would see the blood of children spilled...
Twenty-Six lives in all, Twenty-Six families called,
Twenty-Six beating hearts....

....forever stilled ~

Catherine Mitchell
12/21/12