Current World State: Automatic Guns

It never should have happened
they say as they examine the bodies
scattered on the cold tile floor.
Police tape draped haphazardly
across the glass front doors.

Where was the security guard?
He ran at the sight of an automatic
gun barrel pointed down the hall.
He didn’t run away as some say
he ran to begin the lockdown protocol.
Clearing out kids in the open courtyard,
such an easy target for the AR-15
and the kid behind the metal.

We lost seventeen today.
How do we come to terms with this loss?
How have we come to a point
where kid on kid violence
is just another massacre?
We turn the other cheek.
Yet children still wake in nightmares
while the world continues to sleep.

KB Hadley earned her MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from Augsburg University, and her work can be seen in Twig and Barstow & Grand. She also works as a mentor with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. KB lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and dog.