A Poem for a Child Killed in a Car Accident--Janyia Thomas

Timara Wilcoxson, a woman we know from the St. Mary's Painesville Karpos meal, has suffered a great tragedy, the loss of her three-year-old child Janyia in a pedestrian car accident in Broadview Heights. I wrote the following poem as an elegy, a lament, for the poor child, her mother, and her entire family. We pray for this suffering family.

O Broken Heart—A Dirge for Timara and Janyia

O broken heart!

Three-year-old Janyia lying dead on the street,

Her mother Timara asking her, over and over,

To open her eyes, “Janyia, wake up; you’re not doing this to Mommy,

Just wake up.”

The two other babies, Mia and Kylina, safe but stunned

By the unfeeling car, striking everyone down,

And their little sister quiet and still

Under the car.

The heartbreak seeps in, then sweeps in like a tidal wave

Cold and blackness and impossibility, this stillness,

This stillness!

Her life so hard as it is, three babes under 4,

And an unborn one in her womb, 7 months,

Contractions triggered by the trauma of the car accident.

Seven days later, the little child Janyia waked and buried,

The heart broken. Can it ever heal? Can the pain, Sweet Jesus,

Ever subside, like the tsunami of suffering and

Darkness.

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                                                Bob Coughlin / August 24, 2017