Sandy Coleman
“Elsewhere”
Response

The Map
By Laura Shovan
Inspiration piece

She emptied her son’s backpack

after the bus put up its wheelchair lift

and drove away, after she rolled him

up the ramp and through their front door.

Once there was a map in his backpack,

mirror image of the pale blue T-shirt

she had dressed him in that morning, freshly laundered,

now streaked with God-knew what.

The map of his shirt said a black smudge was finger paint

(it was nearing Halloween, his aide wrote,

they were doing spiders), green was grass from recess,

the glowing orange splotch – not a pumpkin –

Miranda “borrowed” a highlighter from the teacher’s pen jar,

drew a lopsided heart on his shoulder.

The brown was chocolate (they told Robbie

not to share his MnMs, but….)

When her son died, she thought about the map.

If he had worn a map on the last day, what would she know?

The spider and the grass, the misshapen heart,

chocolate melting on a quiet tongue.

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