Hernando County Victim Resource Advocate Poem by James McLain

Before I called, I thought, perhaps.

This country without families,
would you have?
Could you ever be?
Like all the rest, or be like me.

Like you all, without the information,
that I needed.
Better, more and well informed is each decision,
I could not make ever make, some withheld.
When the wrong one,
to some one else, it always was.

My bringing her to you.
Instinctive though it was.
Then trusting her with you and you,
not D.C.F.
I mean the Sheriff

And over and over against my,
never common, lost ever since.
My only child.

What was done then will forever afterwords,
be too me, invisable is ink.

Dear, ' Tamera Steward,
are you, were you right?
We should not be having
this phone conversation.
You were not the victim,
and I can not be ever fired.

Do you have it all rehearsed,
as to what it is to tell her.
Why It was I brought her
and I fought so she might live.
Unlike her other brother, whom
because of that, he never was.

Or like all the rest another lie?
Some of you whom knew, before I came up there.
And some of you whom think it's fine
to leave a child alone with that a drunk.
Who said those evil things.
Do you think I will just die and go away?


Make it as it was is how to you, you never can.
Latin is for what.
Terrified,
always afraid,
of what was nearly done to me, again.