Lullaby for the Parents of Lost Children

Flashing blue lights pierced the ominous twilight of the alley behind the row of terraced houses, while uniformed police officers combed the fields and the woodland beyond. Friends and neighbours watched from doorsteps and upstairs windows. Later, they joined Theresa’s husband, Mick, and the police in a wider search.

For now, Theresa sat at the kitchen table. A young female officer filled their mugs with fresh tea from the pot. Theresa’s phone rang. It was her mother, who had been contacted by the tea pourer, in case the twins had turned up there.

‘Any sign of them, love?’

‘No Mum. Nothing yet.’ A tear trickled silently down her cheek.

‘Chin up, love. There’s a lullaby for suffering parents, especially those of lost children.’ And she proceeded to sing to her daughter until their hearts cracked open, even that of the police officer holding the teapot.

Kim M. Russell, 17th March 2025

Image by Blake Cheek on Unsplash

This Monday at the dVerse Poets Pub we are writing Prosery with Björn, who has shared a line from a song by Leonard Cohen.

Björn says that he remembers how he first came across Leonard Cohen when he released ‘I’m your man’ in 1987, and continued to listen to his records up to the last one, released just a month before he died. Unlike Björn, I first encountered Cohen’s poetry in the nineteen seventies, which I loved, but never really liked his voice or the melodies of his songs.

I too chose a Leonard Cohen line for my own Prosery prompt last August, and his words worked very well. I really like the line Björn has chosen for his prompt: “There’s a lullaby for suffering”. It wasn’t easy to find the right story to incorporate it into a piece of prose that does not exceed 144 words, although we may split the line and introduce punctuation; however, the original order of the words must remain as it is.

33 thoughts on “Lullaby for the Parents of Lost Children”

    1. My ex-husband lost my daughter on Wimbledon Common many years ago, when she was four. They had the helicopter out and everything. He didn’t let me know until they found her and brought her home with some of his friends because he knew how upset I would be.

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  14. That just brought me to tears. Your prose certainly pulled the heartstrings this morning. I am left unsettled what has become of the twins?

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  16. Hello Kim. I enjoyed the originality of your story and what you did with the prompt. I also liked how the lullaby cracked open the heart of the anxious mother whose thoughts undoubtedly had hardened due to the extremity of the situation and potential of the worst possible outcome. I would be very interested to see how this story plays out if you wrote a sequel. If it turns out the twins were abducted, it would be some small solace to them (believe or it not,) if they had been kidnapped together. As children, the greatest fear of a twin is being apart from their sibling. (I know it was for me growing up.)

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    1. Thank you for reading and commenting, Christopher. I hope to write a sequel for the next Prosery prompt, depending on the line(s) of poetry selected by the host. I look forward to your comment.

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