the night after the covenant school shooting, i was at work.

a man comes in and is very kind to me,
seems kind to his wife as well. but he turns and i see something on his hip, a holster. and the gun.

now, i live in tennessee. the sight was not too strange, but so unsettling after what had just happened. how could he walk around openly carrying the same weapon that had killed people just hours before?

how could he bring a firearm into our store, after hearing about those deaths?

these prayers to gods who don’t hear us are not working, and our government does not know how to protect us in ways that matter. we can scream at the top of our lungs that it isn’t fair, but it will fall on deaf ears.

as a child in america, i am terrified every day. terrified that my brothers will not make it home after i drop them off. terrified that my mom will pick up the wrong substitute teaching job. terrified that my best friends will not graduate with me because this country is more focused on how people represent themselves rather than what is killing us.

i am seventeen and i am so tired of being scared for my ******* life. there is blood on the floor and on our hands and in our memories and we practice hiding in our classrooms and workplaces because it is real. these kids were real and now they are dead.