If only I had known

I Knew her as a child
Sweet, quick to smile
She jumped rope with my sister.

As she grew she developed
A sense of casual wrecklessness
After I left for the Navy

One Morning on her way to school
She jumped off the railbridge
She broke her arm and shattered her soul

And failed to tell her father
how much it hurt her soul
when he used her body.

I only came back once
to the emptiness
Where had been a town

Fifty years after it was reduced
to a token offering
in a political game and lost.

I once said
Here they should test
The bomb of bombs

And leave a crater
that marks the entrance
To Isolation, desolation and despair.

She stayed nearby
And died one night
Drunk and Alone

If I had only known
I would not be looking
For her marker