“Monday” by Ingrid Wagner

From the Poet: The poem Monday is a reaction to the brutal killing of ten members of the Boulder community by a mass shooter at a grocery store in March of 2021. Coincidentally, it was the same day my 17-year old son got his driver’s license. The work is my attempt at a raw response to the simultaneous joy and horror, freedom and fear, intimate local trauma, and national rubber-necking that the day brought to our family and our community while being conscious of the event's fleeting importance in an ever-changing and fickle news cycle. — Ingrid Wagner, June 2021

It is a Monday, like any other in 2021.

Kids sleep in — an asynchronous day

in an otherwise metronomical year. 

A pandemic still keeps our time —  

close, safe, hopeful, inside at measured distance.

I scroll the morning news. Still processing the loss of six sisters in Atlanta, 

murdered days earlier as recompense for a white man/boy’s “bad day.”

Calls to action go unanswered. Rage and impotence vie for headspace.

The numbness of national complacency creeps in. Yesterday’s news cycle.

An almost-new normal at a time when the word already holds little meaning.

Under that shroud, I manage the day’s events — 

appointments, obligations, bureaucracies.

My sweet, sweet boy, elated at the new freedom that 

a two-by-three card with his photo affords him. 

He is life and beauty and potential — oysters on buffet for miles. 

Keys in his pocket, he is ready to light out. Bye, Mom!

But on this Monday, the world has other ideas.

2:49pm. In the insignificant-beautiful part of the universe we call home, 

notifications bombard our mobiles. Stay away. Seek shelter. Lockdown.

Another man/boy (all of 21), wields five assault rifles at midday shoppers — 

neighbors — choosing produce and snacks, not life or death.

Ten lives taken in a matter of minutes. Instant trauma reverberates through families, 

community, state, and country. Our sanctuary violated by the ugliness of real life.

A friend texts me, “Please no, not again.” We have lived this too many times before.

Before the sun is gone, flowers fill fences, and candles hold vigil. 

Blue and red lights pierce the night sky, a processional in memoriam.

Just as quickly, forces from the outside invade our communal grief, 

pushing agendas in the universal language of comments and hashtags. 

Our loss of dear ones, forgotten to politics. The multisyllabic name of the killer 

more important than our heartbreak, mitigated with thoughts and prayers. 

No privacy to mourn; still, abandoned in the aftermath.

I struggle to assimilate yet another tragedy, as my heart goes 

out into the world, barely a man/boy himself. Is his hope for naught?

What lessons are we leaving, what horrors to be reconciled 

by wide-eyed optimists? It is a bait-and-switch of promise for problems.

His freedom should not be measured by magazines and rounds, 

but in the knowledge that he can safely wake, walk, work, learn, love,

and look forward to the weekend, like any other Monday. 

About Ingrid Wagner
She/Her/Hers

Ingrid Wagner is originally from Evanston, Illinois. Enchanted by visits to the Rocky Mountains as a child, she migrated West almost 25 years ago and has never looked back. She is a career storyteller for brands big and small, a curator for museum and private exhibitions nationwide, and a writer for social justice causes. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband, three children, and two dogs.