How do you carry a child's coffin
When not long ago, you cradled them in your arms?
How do you wrap a child in burial cloth
When just a few years ago, you were still dressing them?
Where there was laughter and learning,
There came screaming and ******.
No smell of school dinners wafting through corridors,
Only burning and gunfire and blood.
Dread and panic replaced exam nerves,
And mourning has destroyed post-test celebrations.
What have we become, to turn a school into an execution site
Under the facade of a warzone?
To drag children out from seats, stare innocence in the face
And send them lifeless to the ground with a single bullet?
There is no cause great enough to **** children,
Nor any punishment severe enough to atone.
Families have been ripped to fragments,
And friendships have been severed or laid to rest together.
Hallways are silent with the heaviness of death,
But the living are still crying and screaming with grief.
We mourn for the dead and we weep for the living,
And as always, we plead, beg, hope for better days to come.
How do you carry your child's coffin
Knowing it's the last time you'll carry them to bed?
How do you wrap your child in burial cloth
Knowing it's the last time you'll ever see their face?