Morn­ing in a café—Rain. The wait­ress, with the qui­et beau­ty of a Gau­guin paint­ing, brings me my usu­al cof­fee. As I get up to leave, she pass­es me a note writ­ten in pen­cil. The first three words are crossed out. The rest take up the en­tire page like a cou­plet. "Sor­ry to say/this to you/But I lost/My son on Au­gust 22, 2019/Via/a sin­gle gun­shot/To his left chest/my on­ly son/23 years old."

We meet lat­er, out­doors, un­der rain-sod­den trees where she re­moves a fold­ed note out of the pock­et of her apron and reads it while I make notes.

"I re­ceived a call that dev­as­tat­ed my mind, body and soul say­ing my 23-year-old son was shot. I asked, 'Is my son dead or alive?' The an­swer was. 'Not sure.'

"I ar­rived at the POS Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. As I ap­proached Emer­gency, I kept say­ing, 'God, give me grace, please God.' I iden­ti­fied my­self to the nurse—stand­ing by a door to my right—as his moth­er. The nurse said to me, 'when he ar­rived, he was still warm, but...' I told her, 'I know. I felt it in my bel­ly.

"In the hos­pi­tal, I fol­lowed the nurse to my son's bed­side. She left me alone with him. I said to my dead son who was shot and killed by a sin­gle bul­let to his left chest; 'Well boy, this is it. What can I say? It is over.'

"I played with my son's face, his eye­brows, his cheeks, his nose. I closed his eyes and his mouth, and I kissed him on his fore­head. Then look­ing for where he was shot, I found the spot, on his left chest, ban­daged. There was no blood. Did you put the part where I kissed his fore­head? Good.

"Peace came over me as I cov­ered my son's face with the sheet. I tucked the sides neat­ly. The nurse hand­ed me his be­long­ings ex­cept his cloth­ing which she kept, say­ing 'this is a homi­cide'.

"She said he was dropped off and made it to Emer­gency where he col­lapsed. I walked out of the hos­pi­tal shocked, con­fused, sad­dened and an­gry to know my son was all alone when he passed away. You have that?

"I thought of dy­ing, stopped eat­ing. But I knew I must learn to live know­ing my son is dead, not blame my­self. I did the best I knew, hand­ed down to me from my par­ents which was not much—car­ing, pro­vid­ing, say­ing, 'I love you, son' when­ev­er I saw him. That bul­let came at him from every­where and any­where in hurt­ing T&T—Each home is wracked by greed and the grief of vi­o­lence—ver­bal and phys­i­cal."

She speaks with evan­gel­i­cal strength.

The sub­text: I will not be felled by the evil that con­tributed to my son's death, his fa­ther that ghost­ed him; the sur­ro­gate gang fa­thers—com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers whose state con­tracts fu­el the 190 plus gangs with some 2,500 mem­bers ter­ror­is­ing this coun­try; the 8,000 mur­dered since 1994; the jus­tice so de­layed it is de­nied; the low de­tec­tion; the lousy wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme, the 1.6 mil­lion il­le­gal guns through­out CARI­COM, the cul­ture of fetes, the school sys­tem churn­ing il­lit­er­ate chil­dren, ego­tis­ti­cal politi­cians push­ing de­pen­den­cy; the un­sus­tain­able jobs, the greedy soul­less men who bring in arms and drugs in the dead of night un­car­ing of cheap­en­ing hu­man lives, drain­ing all mean­ing out of what it is to be hu­man.

We are liv­ing in a war zone, with­out the tanks, shel­ters, bombs over­head, or dead bod­ies on the road. Our killing fields are most­ly silent: armed men with ri­fles, rapid gun­fire, jammed foren­sic cen­tres, frozen bod­ies of dead boys in mor­tu­ar­ies, fu­ner­al par­lours do­ing a brisk busi­ness.

The griev­ing wait­ress is seek­ing con­so­la­tion in weep­ing skies cry­ing. "God, give me grace."

If we didn't be­lieve in God, we would have to be­lieve we were an­i­mals, with short ex­pend­able lives end­less­ly ex­posed to death on a dark high­way

That's why re­li­gious fer­vour is high here. With­out it, the car­nage would dri­ve us col­lec­tive­ly mad.

No, she would not let them win. She would not.

"Grace. Please, God."

She re­turns to wait on ta­bles, an­oth­er de­hu­man­ised cit­i­zen with stones for eyes won­der­ing where love went...