deepundergroundpoetry.com

"LSU urges students to 'Run, hide, or fight.'"

**trigger warning - guns / shooting**


~


I was going to get coffee, now
knees to chin in my dorm closet. about a mile away
it happened,
this new normal
we pretend no one can affect.

someone with a gun

I hold
my knees and have
church in my dorm room
Mass for the shooting as another
 shooting amasses
another day of weather
a chance of bullets
from cocked clouds
and
another
inch crumbled off the coastline,
hands of the ocean waving a higher
hello to the sun; another
extra bead of summer sweat
another nervous joke about coat hanger sales in Alabama

my skin is light
and unpierced
and in new clothes
birth control saves my blood
from ever needing to push real terror or
helplessness

I am absolutely fine

My stomach holds the absence of fear
Like a potluck dish at America's open casket
The easy privilege
of having nothing to mourn
a little warm in my hands
This black afternoon's been going on for ages, for
ever, really
and my offering is useless
to the dead ones
getting cold

Outside
bullets may be flying
by like birds
who must land somewhere

the situation is ongoing
Written by rowantree
Published
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