“How bad could it have been when he didn’t have a gun?”
They tell me as my heart’s pounding
Legs numb
While my mind battles to decipher how I’m feeling.
Locked away in my safe dorm
Shaking at the sound of silence
So why am I waiting for that pin to drop?
When I’m not still in that classroom.
And he didn’t have a gun
So why has my dedication deflated to leave my dorm
So why do I still hear the crash of the desks falling to the floor?
Standing stunned, shaking, shivering as my body turns to ice while making eye contact with the man guarding the exit
Following his gestures, drip down his side to his waist
I try to squeeze my sanity through those doors in Greenlaw Hall
And in class, my eyes ascend to every exit
But why
When I, in fact, can’t deny,
He didn’t have a gun.
But when I feel my safety become secondary
While the alert I felt that night never made it to my phone
And doctors are telling me it’s traumatic.
I’m trying to tell myself it’s not true.
Cause I don’t know what to do to make myself feel safe
But I can’t erase what happened in my mind
Therapist telling me just to take time
But my test’s on Tuesday
And everyone’s reminding me he didn’t have a gun
Making a joke of the guy
Haunting the halls of my mind
So how do I forget
Because I’m tired of hearing how people regret what happened to me
Then minimize my cries
Because “that guy” didn’t have a gun
But I wasn’t hiding under that desk for fun
People weren’t screaming and shoving because they were done watching the show
So how do I show them what it feels like when you think your life will slip away in the blink of an eye?
And there’s no alert going out, so my mom wouldn’t have even known if I had died
But that’s too much to carry 3 weeks into class
So I think that I’ll pass
Recounting every second
Because, like you said
It’s OKAY
He didn’t have a gun anyway
