By CNN Opion
FROM: CNN.com

El Paso. Dayton. Odessa. Pittsburgh. Parkland. Santa Fe. Newtown.

Policymakers debate arming teachers. Parents buy bulletproof backpacks. So many adult Americans fret over a generation – more than a generation, before all is said and done – of students raised to know the run-hide-fight of active shooter drills.

But as the body count only grows in America’s deepening crisis of mass shootings, we need to hear from the children who are growing up in the shadow of gun violence. Whether or not they know what it feels like to carry a bulletproof backpack, they know intimately the weight of fear and of anger – of wondering whether they might be next.

CNN Opinion’s Jane Carr invited three teen poets from across the country to share poems they composed in response to the scourge of gun violence.

 

Generation Lockdown
By Violeta Esquivel

This poem is dedicated to those with loved ones affected by guns.
Who would have thought sanctuarieswould no longer be safe?Even churches and schools,safe spaces are lostWe’ve become generation lockdown

I was in first grade when the Sandy Hook school shooting happened.That day 27 young lives were taken

That week my school put up an iron gate.As our parents dropped us offwe’d say goodbye through thick crimson barsthat looked like a jail cell door

That week parents all over America were reminded that life is a short as a moth’s wing,and fear as commonplace as dishes in the sink.

February 14th, 2018, I am in sixth grade when Valentines was not the sameOur hearts were broken that daywhen 17 students in Parkland lost their lives to senseless gun violence

That year we marched for our lives.That week our school got a full-time armed security guard.

America never gets to healwhen our wounds reopen again and againThere have been more mass shootings in 2019 than there have been days this year.

For now I’ll just lock-down my heart,I don’t want to prepare for the next bullet

 

Violeta Esquivel, 13, is a poet and high school student living in the Los Angeles area. Read Rest of Article Here