Lockdown Drill
Line up in quiet, eyes fixed to linoleum walls,
Shallow breaths muffled beneath fluorescent
calls.Don’t speak. Don’t move. Lock the doors tight,
The ritual begins—practice for surviving another night.Teacher tapes the blinds,
hands trembling with scripted dread,
Says “just a drill,” but the silence thickens instead.Backpacks stacked
like sandbags, innocence redefined,
She checks the lock twice, watches the clock unwind.A nervous joke floats,
flinches in air—No one laughs, each heart beats a prayer.
We crouch below the alphabet, knees raw against tile,
Every second a century, every smile a
trial.Heartbeat thunders beneath cartoon charts,
Safety measured in stillness, hope broken apart.We memorize silence,
rehearse the pace,
Prayers for gods we cannot face.It’s ordinary now,
this readiness for loss—Practice for a death, recited at cost.Taught us to freeze,
taught us to hide,
Taught us how to wait for a bullet inside.
This is the lockdown drill—sit still, sit still,
Bulletproof backpacks, faith against the kill.No
solution offered for what makes us bleed,
Just a checklist for terror, a blueprint for need.Here, the lesson’s not math,
not art,
But how to survive with a splintered heart.Taught to be targets, taught to obey,
Memorize fear and hope it will pay.
The shooter memorized these halls, every turn and space,
Moved through the walls we refused to replace.He
bought the gun with change from home,
Planned the hour, then roamed alone.Thoughts and prayers, the headlines read,
But the policy’s unchanged, and more children are dead.Plans recited,
alarms rehearsed,
No cure, only drills rehearsed.
Click the lock. Kill the light.Load the plan, perform the rite.Drills don’t save,
just prepare—To die inside the teacher’s chair.Fingers pressed to mouths,
breaths held tight,Waiting for rescue, dreading the sight.
Hide and seek and count to ten,
Will these children ever come home again?Fear
the first thing we teach with a kiss,
Another school erased from the attendance list.This is not life,
this is a lottery drawn,
A country bled dry while denial drags on.Luck is the lesson,
the only thing taught—Bleeding children ignored, change never sought.