Update: I feel that this is applicable to the Orlando Pulse Shooting if not more so. It hurts. It hurts so much that we’re experiencing this loss of life. And I shouldn’t even have to write this. I shouldn’t be sharing this again. But here I am. Fifty beautiful lives were lost who were a part of the LGBT community. 

Because I’m still too heart broken to really respond any other way to recent events happening close to home and abroad, I wrote a poem in the moments of hearing about the shooting in San Bernardino. But really, it’s something I’ve been wanting to write for a while. Also, a response to Jerry Falwell Jr’s speech recently.

a good guy with a gun

is not any better than a bad guy with a gun

we don’t even bat an eye anymore

it’s just another day in america,

where a good guy with a gun

becomes a bad guy with a gun

and they killed someone’s children, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers.

but when it’s not our family who’s bleeding, screaming, or dying–

when we’re not the ones who are crying,

we say they just needed a good guy with a gun

to kill the bad guy with a gun

because more killing somehow makes us safe.

it hurts so much we don’t feel it anymore

we’ve become numb to the killings

and we still say to ourselves

they just needed a good guy with a gun