800,000 children and adults marching for our lives
is overwhelming, unimaginable
but seventeen dead in 6 minutes and 20 seconds
is suffocating, incomprehensible,
a grief that challenges us to wade into it.
But those numbers take our breath away
when we feel the shaking ground of Washington
reverberate in the heart-heavy footsteps of New York,
Chicago, LA, Boston and along thousands
of other beaten paths,
when the firm and weeping silence of Emma González
echoes in the voices heard and unheard, of students
like her, or not, at podiums, holding microphones
and bullhorns, or not, for the first time,
when 7,000 unique pairs of shoes laid out on the lawn of the Capitol
by countless volunteers working from dawn to the final bell
signal the horror of nearly six years of children
we were willing to lose since twenty and six
murdered made us promise, no more.
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About 800,000 converged on Washington, DC for March for Our Lives rally, organizers say [Sun Sentinel]
Parkland student Emma González demonstrates the power of silence [The Washington Post]
Ann E. Wallace writes of life with illness, motherhood, loss, and other everyday realities. Her work has recently appeared in Wordgathering, The Literary Nest, Eunoia Review, Rogue Agent, The Same, and other journals. She lives in Jersey City, NJ and is on Twitter @annwlace409.
