Sometimes I see you here, Laura
With us
I thought I saw you today
All bundled up
Walking to class
Scarf covering your neck
I breathed in cold air
I stopped
Stood still for a minute
To remember

You are with God now
Looking down on us
And him
I think of you often, Laura
I remember
Sitting behind you
Clean, wavy brown hair
To your shoulders
Touching the top of my desk
Reading Cather, Melville, Twain
You always smiled
We laughed together
I think of that often
Mrs. Murphy always called you “Miss Laura”
Softly
In her thick Latvian accent
You deserved respect
He didn’t think you did

We were both nineteen
So naive
So naive to think nothing would happen
What happened?
Other women experienced it
Before her
No one listened
He lived near her
Knew her comings
Her goings
But he didn’t know you, Laura
Had he known you…

Himself as a weapon
He took you from us
Should have never happened
He stole her future
You will never know true love
Or have a child of your own

We are still grieving
I see you on television, Laura
Same senior picture in my album
Brings back so many memories
I read in the paper
You picked out the family Christmas tree
That last Sunday
A family tradition
Spent the day with them
That last holy day, a day of rest
Your roommate found you Monday afternoon
The room so…
A door wide open
So horrible, the blood

We miss you
I wanted to say goodbye
I couldn’t say goodbye
Not ready to bury you yet
All the people in the world
But he chose you
You lie in the ground now
Scarf covering your neck

I wrote this in 1995, a little more than a year after one of my former high school classmates was killed in Omaha when she was a freshman at UNO. Her name was Laura Gogan and she was such a gentle, sweet person I have never gotten over the fact that such an evil thing could happen to such a good person. I can't think of a single person who ever said a bad thing about her. They did catch the person who killed her and he will be in prison for the rest of his life.  He was a young person, 20ish, lived around her neighborhood and had been seen harrassing other people at the same apartment complex prior to her murder.

The funny thing is (and I don't want to start a heated debate), is that within a year of this horrible death and catching the person responsible, I completely reversed my view of the death penalty. I used to be 100% pro-death penalty. Eye for an eye. Forget to put ketchup and napkins in my bag at McDonald's, you're toast. But when the young man who killed Laura was sentenced to life in prison, something happened inside me. It didn't bother me that he would live a long life in the penitentiary reflecting on the crime that put him there. I wasn't bothered he would be getting 3 squares a day on the taxpayer dime (which really should bother me!). It is not about the appropriateness of the punishment, but the idea that killing him would not accomplish anything. He had never committed a violent crime before that day. How can we make another human, employed by the state, in charge of killing this man to make up for him taking another life, no matter how Good she was? This weighs heavily on me still today as it did then. This event profoundly changed me and continues to affect me today.

Don't be too critical of the poem, I was young once, too.