This is an emotional reckoning with the chilling reality of school violence in America. The poem centers on the brutal lesson students must learn: the three words “Run. Hide. Fight”. A recent school shooting in Georgia made the threat terrifyingly tangible.
The piece guides us through the familiar, horrifying ritual of the lock-down drill: hiding against the cold floor, “pretending fear can’t find us in the dark”. The poem condemns the silence of power, noting a law wasn’t passed, and asks why the world waits for children to become statistics before it starts listening.
- But we still don’t know how to stop the bleeding
- from a wound we never touched.
- And now I wonder,
- What if someone had seen your wound sooner?
- What if silence hadn’t won?