They Let Them Shoot You

They let them shoot you.
At school.
In church.
At the grocery store.
At the parade.

They let them shoot you
and then they blame the music,
the movies,
your mother,
your mental health—
anything but the bullet
and the boy who polished it like a prayer.

They let them burn you, too.
In buildings brought down
by men with vengeance in their veins
and gunpowder in their gods.
They whisper Waco like a warning,
stack homemade firepower on the backs of children,
wrap it all in flags,
and call it freedom.

Columbine echoes in the hallway still.
Oklahoma still shakes in the soil.
And the only thing we learned
was how to look away faster.

They let it happen.
They let it keep happening.
And then they sell you thoughts and prayers
like discount bullets
while your lungs fill with blood.

And if you survive—
God help you—
what does survival mean?

It means medical bills
you’ll never crawl out from under.
It means a GoFundMe for a new jaw,
a new spine,
a new reason to believe in anything.

It means rationed therapy,
denied surgeries,
wheelchair ramps your school board can’t afford.
It means trauma turned policy debate
while you teach yourself to sleep through the sound of sirens.

It means “You’re so lucky.”
It means “At least you’re alive.”
It means a country that left you broken
and called it blessed.

They’ll say you were in the wrong place.
They’ll say now isn’t the time.
They’ll pose for Christmas cards with AR-15s
and tell you guns don’t kill people.

But you’ll know better.

Because you’ve seen the blood.
You’ve smelled the smoke.
You’ve heard the silence that follows the shots—
the silence where help should be.

And still—
they let them shoot you.
They always do.
And they always will.

Unless the silence becomes a scream.