INK POETRY READ

​Letter From The One Who Did Not Survive

by Anika Chamberlain '16

when my old classmates see each other in the supermarket
a bond stronger than that of typical alumni is between them
there is a battlefield still on fire in their minds

when they speak to each other, it is not just a friendly greeting
they are not just past classmates
they are past comrades
they relive that day together
the nightmare we got trapped in with no alarm clock release
the game we could not quit out of
the monster did not stay in our closets or under our beds that day
they speak with soft eyes and heavy hearts
and tell the tale about the time they looked into the eyes of the boogie man

I will never be the familiar face they greet in the grocery store
I will never be an old hello met with a new goodbye
I am the name they dance around
the eyes that never closed
the old friend who they never got to say goodbye to
I am the reason they remember that day so well


I am eternalized in twelve inches of granite
covered in flowers in various stages of life and death
it is like reliving the last day of my life every day
surrounded by my classmates in their varying amounts of alive as roses a bloomed out of their chests


I did not want a memorial
I did not want flowers
I did not want this


I had years in front of me
and they terrified me
but I should have gotten to live them
I should have gotten to live


you know,
I wanted my life to have meaning
but I am gone and it does not mean anything to you


because there is no meaning in a memorial
there is no condolence in candle lightings
no faith in these flowers
there is no progress in a plaque
if more kids are dying this same way
let the flowers die too
it must have meant nothing at all


but what you saw of me was just a school ID
and I looked like a nice kid
I bet you thought it was a shame
that a good college-bound kid like me died this way
but you shrug and say
“Another day, another school shooting.”


this is how desensitized you have become to the whole thing
people are dying
and you are shrugging it off


you weren’t there
the blood is not stuck in the corners of your eyes
you do not have this memory of bodies lodged in the meat of your brain
you saw me without a bullet between my eyes
it is easy to see a picture of me smiling at a camera
and feel little more than a distant sadness


tell me liberals blame guns
never the killer
how are you so blind?
it may have taken a hundred bad days, a touch of mental instability, and a sworn vendetta
but it took just one bullet


tell me that an act to prohibit gun violence is fruitless
in a country with an overfunded “War on Drugs” going on
that puts millions of poor people behind bars every year
while the upper class pop more bottles of pills than champagne


pro-life picketers petition planned parenthood to put an end to pap smears
thick skulls can’t comprehend the business as anything more than an abortion clinic
how can you be 
pro death penalty, anti-gun control, anti-universally affordable health care, anti-immigration
and still have the nerve to call yourself pro-life


I was living my life
but now the taste of metal never leaves my mouth
when I look in the mirror I see blood
these hands turn into spider webs in my wildest nightmares
and I am still waiting for the shrapnel to wash out of my eyes


I did not want a memorial
I wanted a diploma and maybe a college degree in a few years
I wanted to see the prettiest city in France lit up in the night time
I wanted to fall in love, and get my heart broken, again and again
I wanted to drink boxed wine on a rooftop somewhere I couldn’t see the stars
and I wanted to live


but what I got was my name in stone
and my only friends are pitying eyes cast on the parentheses around my life
“She was so young,” they say, “It is such a shame.”


you probably would not recognize my name
but I can bet you know the name of the man at the other end of the gun
this memorial is meaningless
you do not remember me
I am only another statistic for an argument on either side
my name will never be in lights
or in rolling credits


I am nothing more the 137th person to get shot at school since 1980
a +1 in the ever rising number of casualties and injuries
a number
a victim
a casualty
this is what I have been reduced to


I don’t even have a name anymore
he took that away from me
you took that away from me
you forgot about me, didn’t you?
to you,
I am just one of seven shot dead in a school library
I am somewhere within a blur of faces you sort of remember on the news one night
I am a sad song played over a slideshow of nameless photographs shared a few hundred times on Facebook
I am a name that you will not remember carved into a stone
I am hidden somewhere barely beyond the stars and just beneath the gravel
I am forgotten


I am gone.