America, we are under attack
as guns burst in our classrooms
the federal government signs the Patriot Act
because
we are willing to spend billions of dollars
protecting ourselves against foreign threats
but America, how can we begin to forget
the lives lost at our own triggers?

It’s 1999 and at Columbine high school
two students open fire on their peers
the sound of those bullets ripping the air
in their way
must have been the most terrifying last sound
to hear

And while I can only imagine
what it would be like to live my last moments
enslaved within the grasp
of a gun breathing death
I don’t have to imagine anymore
because mass violence is happening next door
I go to sleep making sense of
popping sounds blaring outside

I go to sleep every night
remembering the time
my little brother was playing in a park
dribbling his basketball
to the rhythm of three gunshots
Because it could’ve been him
He could’ve been one more body
in the count
one more statistic in our textbooks

Because America,
2015 will go down in our records
as a year with more mass shootings
than days so far
we are under siege
spilling our dollars
protecting against muslim extremists
when we hear gun barrels
emptying themselves into our schools
into our communities
into our country

And we continue to preach freedom
but in a nation

with 89 guns per one hundred people
Freedom is not our reality
Because we live under the crushing system
that finds going to the funeral of a child
more socially acceptable
than sending a mentally ill potential shooter
into therapy

this destruction is our reality
this destruction is our status quo
but this destruction isn’t the way things
have to be

We need to recognize the problem
of domestic terrorists running this country
We need to strengthen regulations
on the hands that touch guns
we need to put child-safe padlocks
on every gun cabinet
we need to provide therapy for violent kids
so parents of fallen children do not have to
live another day regretting
that they sent their child
to school

This is a problem we can no longer ignore
Because we are under attack
and this time,
the attacker
is us