1999, Columbine High School, 15 dead.

2005, Red Lake High School, 10 dead.

2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School, 27 dead. 

2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 17 dead. 

2022, Robb Elementary School, 22 dead.

In America, an eighteen-year-old with adrenaline and anger thrumming in his veins is buying an assault rifle while “To Kill A Mockingbird” is snatched out of a middle schooler's hands.  

In America, a fake I.D is scrutinized in a bar while a cashier says “Have a nice day!” to a young man with an AK-47. 

We are taught that to bear arms is our unalienable right

But the constitution doesn’t say that we have the right to survive second period.

In America, more children die from firearms than car accidents.

Don’t wear your seatbelts and maybe we can beat gun violence.    

In America, we learn like obedient four-foot-nothing little soldiers:    

Make a plan. 

Don’t open the door

Know your routes 

Where to run

Don’t be a hero. 

A prismatic banner reads “Class of 2022”    

“Congrats!”   

Under it 

Contorted fourth graders

Their bodies strewn all over.

Ruby streams flooding from each

Carving into the linoleum like the veins on our skins.

Their classmates laid still in their blood

In a silent plea that the gunman would overlook them.

But when they finally got up

Washed their hands,

Changed their clothes,

And scraped the dried blood out from under their nails,

The stains still remained.

PTSD

Depression

Anxiety.

Lawmakers send prayers to bereaved families

As they get money from the NRA.

“Guns don’t kill, people do!”      

“Build walls around the schools!”    

“Arm the teachers!”  

I can see it now:    

A gunman walks into a classroom, the teacher shoots them dead in one try    

And goes back to teaching the quadratic formula as the body is dragged out.

In America, parents are sobbing as they watch their child go to college

And parents are sobbing as they watch their child be buried. 

In America, there are elementary schoolers that will grow up to become mass murderers

And there are elementary schoolers that won’t grow up at all.

May 24, 2022, Robb Elementary School, 22 dead.