In a dream, I stand on a precipice.
My hands shake like the shoulders of those weeping for lost loved ones.
The tops of trees around me sway like survivors supporting each other in comradery.
I can’t see the ground below but I know it is there and I know it goes by ‘reality’ and I know it will hit me like a truck and yet--
I fall.
I fall into the chaos below,
I fall into the mayhem and the sorrow and wake only to wonder:
What next?
Where next?
Who next?
I walk through the halls, my head bent, mind racing, someone calls my name.
I look around to the faces of my classmates, searching for the friend I heard and I realize that I am afraid.
Afraid of everything I thought I knew,
Realizing that my perfect little bubble of a world can be shattered
In an instant.
Realizing that one day that person who called my name can be there and the next
gone.
Realizing that my right to life is overshadowed by those that value their guns
More than their kids.
So I stand here sorry.
Sorry you don’t care enough.
Sorry I’m afraid to go to school.
Sorry I have to see cops on my campus.
Sorry we haven’t “spoken up”.
Sorry we’re not protecting ourselves.
Sorry there is more in this world than high school.
Sorry I hope to see it one day.
Sorry you can’t give up a semi-automatic weapon in your suburban town, with your picket fence and your steady income so that I
That WE
Can go to school without fear.
Can stand in the halls without hiding.
Can move on to new, exciting chapters in our lives.
Chapters that some of our peers will never get to see.
I dream again of the precipice.
Trees still sway together in the wind, the ground still too far to see.
But this time, I jump
I jump into the world I now know, with the power to change it, mold it,
Into something I can be proud of.