The children play dead
at the sound of gunshots.
Every game of cops and robbers
was a training exercise
to prepare them for the next raid.
I heard of a boy who
got caught in the crossfire.
He was watching the Saturday cartoons
on his grandmother’s couch
when the living room took in the
exhale of a pistol’s deadly breath
Aiyanna was sleeping.
The room filled with smoke
as the flash grenades ignited her blanket.
A big show for the A&E cameras
doing a special on violence in the city of Detroit.
A single bullet burst from an officer’s
MP5 submachine gun.
It found her head and
spilled her future onto the apartment floor.
These children –
these casualties in a silent war
lost their lives yesterday, today,
and will die again tomorrow
as a new name takes their
place among the obituaries.