Shirley Brewer

After Words Shirley Brewer

223 The number of homicides in Baltimore City in 2010. 23 The age of Stephen Bradley Pitcairn, one of those victims. Numb, we watch the news from a safe distance. No personal blood is shed. Yet, beyond statistics lie human emotions-pain that cuts deeper than any weapon. Poet Shirley J. Brewer responded to the stabbing death of Stephen Pitcairn, who envisioned a career as a doctor. Instead, he died in the street just one block from Brewer's home in Baltimore's Charles Village neighborhood. Brewer gives tragedy a voice. In words both spare and poignant, she creates an awareness of the staggering ways violence robs everyone-families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and society as a whole. In After Words, we grieve. Our sorrow is specific, for Stephen and the Pitcairn family. It is also universal-for every person whose life has been lacerated by crime. One knife, and we all bleed.