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September 16, 2015

Every 30 Minutes. {Poem}

scared child nervous

Each time I slip into child’s pose,
I think about how my five-year-old son

was taught to crouch and hide behind
classroom shelves, tuck his body

into the smallest dot,
cover his ragged breath with a palm.

Before he thought to ask about god or death,
there were what-if bullets shelling his dreams,

evacuation plans to line-up under the primary
colors of the alphabet.

I remember reading our first book,
tracing the words with my trigger finger,

while rocking his tiny
body by the night-window,

when the moon was a slip
in the wide-sieve of dark.

~

”Every 30 minutes a child or teen dies or is injured from a gun. On average, seven children and teens are killed by guns every day in our country. In other words, on average, every three days more children are killed than at the Sandy Hook school shooting.”  ~ People for a Safer Society

 

Relephant:

There Have Been 204 Mass Shootings in America in the Last 204 Days.

 

Author: Megan Merchant

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Capture Queen/Flickr

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