Ballerina Doctor 

I was six when I wanted to be a ballerina.

I would dance in my living room.

Arms swaying to the rhythm of the music like the trees in the wind.

Blinded by my own bliss.

I was six when I wanted to be a doctor.

I would patch up my stuffed animals with bandaids,

and listen to their heartbeat with my fake stethoscope.

Attempting to sew the small rips only made them larger,

but it was the thought that counted

I was six when I learned how to count to one hundred.

I would wonder how many numbers were left until I reached the last one.

The time on the clock lapsed by faster than my small fingers could count.

I was ten years old,

when twenty miles from where I sashay out of class,

tiny hands pushed against locked doors.

Screams were silenced by the cracking of a Bushmaster XM15 rifle.

Just as pleads for gun control were silenced by the NRA.

I am fourteen years old,

but there are twenty children like me who won’t be.

The words, “massacre,” reverberated throughout the United States,

On December 12, 2014.

Because this generation has become so used to violence,

that we have become accustomed to our own grief.

Snake tongued politicians manage to use our sorrow to distract us from gun control.

“March for our lives,” has become, “march for their lies.”

The United States was conceived by rifles,

not by a declaration.

They were six years old,

when their sweet dreams of becoming a ballerina doctor

never came true.

Dedicated to Sandy Hook elementary school. Never forget.