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A prayer for the children...
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We pray for the children who sneak popsicles before supper, who erase holes in math workbooks, who can never find their shoes.
And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can not bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who never "counted potatoes", who are born in places where we would not be caught dead, who never go to the circus, who live in a X rated world.
We pray for children who bring us sticky kisses and fists full of dandelions, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.
And we pray for those who never get dessert, who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents watch them die, who can not find any bread to steal, who do not have a room to clean up, whose photograph is not on someones dresser, whose monsters are real.
We pray for children who spend all their allowance before tuesday, who like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under the bed, who never rinse out the bathtub, who get visits from the tooth fairy, who do not like being kissed in front of the car pool, who squirm in church and scream into the telephone, whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.
And we pray for those nightmares come in the daytime, who will eat anything, who have never seen a dentist, who have nobody to spoil them, who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, who live and move but have no being.
We pray for children who want to be carried and those who must, who we never give up on and for those who never get a second chance.
For those we smother...and for those who will grab the hand of anybody to offer it.
Author unknown
In memory of Students Natalie Brooks, Paige Herring, Stephanie Johnson, Brittany Varner, age 12, and Teacher Shannon Wright, age 32. They were killed March 24, 1998 in Arkansas by a student who carried a gun.
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