the moment a poet
falls in love with you

is the moment
you live

f o r e v e r

Sometimes I get really angry that You left me.
Sometimes I understand that it was for the best,
that I am finally free of your toxic behaviors
that dragged me down, though I didn’t even realize.

Sometimes I get sad that You left me.
I look through pictures, remembering the adventures you gave me,
dreams that no one else could have made reality.
The stupid things that we did together that made me live more
in one year than I ever have in my whole lifetime.

Sometimes I am indifferent that You left Me,
because I know your thought process and where the blame lies.
I know that you blame me, and I know that you will never understand
the truth of what actually happened, because the truth was always your weakness.

Sometimes I regret that You left Me.
I thought about reaching out many times, until finally
I did.
And we talked. That reminder of Us was there; that passion, that fire.
And you left me on Read for all the months after,
because I had asked how your life was going.

Sometimes I get really angry that you left Me,
because you post about how you’re lonely and sad,
how nice it would be to have friends.
Just like you do every time you let a friend go,
crumbling them between your fingers and watching their ashes fly away from you,
wondering, “why are they leaving me?”

Mom I’m home,
Guess what I learned in class today?
I learned what rooms are safest for hiding.
I learned what it sounds like to hear my classmates scream.
I learned what it looks like when the bodies of my friends fall
like pretend soldiers that were never meant for a real war.

Mom, today I learned what war looks like,
because now it looks like our schools.
We wear bulletproof backpacks and carry
textbooks over our heads.
Our base is rigged with smoke bombs to
disorient our enemies and
little black boxes to let them know when we are safe.

Mom, today I learned the meaning of fear.
It means never seeing you again, or Dad.
It means sending texts in between clutching other people’s hands
as we all try to keep quiet as we quiver in the closets.
It means not knowing if the sounds outside the door are
another tortured orphan, another lone wolf,
or the sounds of our saviors coming to bring us home.

Mom, today I learned that I must fight.
I must fight for the future that I want to see.
I must fight for my friends, for other kids,
and for our right to live.
I must fight for Alyssa,
for Scott,
for Martin,
for Nicholas, Aaron, and Jaime.
I must fight for Peter,
for Joaquin,
for Cara, Gina, Luke, and Alaina.
I must fight for Meadow,
for Helena,
Alex, Carmen, Chris,
and all of the other students that won’t be coming home from school.
WE must fight for Parkland, for Sandy Hook, for Columbine, for Marshall County,
and all of the other schools that turned into historical battlegrounds.
Because this is history.

We are all actors if we continue to pretend that everything is okay.
We are all actors if we continue to think that anyone with a gun license
should be able to purchase an assault rifle,
though they continue use it on kids who haven’t even gotten their driver’s licenses yet.
Those of us here today, we are actors because we are fighting for what is right,
we are fighting to have our voices heard and our demands met.
But they are the ones who are acting.
They act like we are to blame for our own murders.
They act like the solution isn’t right in front of them.
They act like school shootings can be fixed with more guns.

No more.
No more guns in our schools.
No more wondering if we’ll make it off campus today.
No more hoping that the world won’t forget their names.
No more fearing for our lives in a place that should be dedicated to educating us,
to bettering us, and to connecting us.
No more.

There’s something inside of me.
It’s dark, it’s cold,
It’s hollow.

There’s something inside of me.
A quiet black, a rumbling thunder,
And it won’t go away.

There’s something inside of me,
And whether it will **** me, or whether I will live,
Has yet to be determined.

I want to live, you must understand.
I want the wind in my hair, the sand between my fingers.
But maybe this is the darkness, the absence of light.
I am lost in a tunnel that they say will end,
But where is the end?

The light up ahead is dull and obscured,
Hours of worthless time thrown in my path.
I climb over obstacles, deadlines, and papers,
I climb over emails and messages and phone calls.
I grasp in the dark and hold on to what I think could be light.

Along my path are glowing embers, promises of light,
And as I try to touch them, as I hold them in my hands,
They fade into nothing.
The things I touch that once brought joy crumble away to ash,
But it is I who cannot crumble.

I let the dust fall from my fingertips and I walk on blind,
Clinging to promises and hopes and quiet words.
I cling to the people stumbling alongside me in the tunnels,
And others I bade to leave until there is no one but me and few others.

There’s something inside of me, you see,
It’s dark and cold and hollow,
Like thunder that won’t settle down.
Whether it will **** me, or whether I will live,
Has yet to be determined.