A Silenced Death

Gun violence is a wedge issue that is often rammed into our political discourse during an election cycle. Videos and personal accounts of mass shootings captivate us on the evening news and sometimes threaten our own moral calculus and feelings about the state of American crime. However, even with gun violence occurring in America every day, our intense fascination with gun crime seems to come in frivolous boom and bust cycles that closely mirror an extremely volatile economy.

According to the CDC, over sixty percent of all gun deaths in America are a result of suicides, with another thirty percent coming from homicides — most of which occur in metropolitan areas. Less than approximately two percent of all gun deaths are a result of mass shootings; yet, that very two percent represents the strong plurality of our national conversation on gun violence. It is almost as if we, as a populace, are walking ourselves into an empathy trap. As Paul Bloom, an associate professor of psychology at Yale University, writes: “…Empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data.” The mere fact that so much of our conversation on gun violence is focused on our emotional attachment to the victims of mass shootings and not on the victims of homicide and suicide represents a sickening moral callousness that is beginning to infect Americans. Our own empathy has begun to bias us along many racial, societal, and economic lines.

As a result, this phenomenon has driven us to become ignorant of our own problems and instead run around in circles arguing with each other instead of pursuing solutions to stop deaths beyond the realm of mass shootings. I write this poem to stand up for the victims whose stories are silenced in favor of those that the media deems to be more “emotionally appealing” to viewers. I write this poem to stand up against politicians who use mass shootings alone to represent gun violence and are blinded by their own empathy from looking at alternative, non-partisan solutions and policies that would stop gun crime. I write this poem to ask for data-driven solutions to gun violence that don’t just target mass shootings, but rather gun crime as a whole. But, most of all, I write this poem to provide a voice to the over ninety percent of innocent gun victims that are murdered by silent assailants, urban terrorists, and mistreated diseases who we don’t hear about and are forgotten for eternity.

“Pop, Pop, Pop” rang the shots.

The smell of smoke I remembered,

The taste of blood I dreaded.

—

I peer down at myself from above

But no one returns a glance from below.

The assailant is gone,

Most likely a lowly gang’s pawn.

My life, though, is forgotten, sent adrift

On the streets of Chicago, my body sits.

—

Another time, another day

A child is put in harm’s way.

This child, though, is all too sweet

From his precious white skin to his rosy red cheeks.

—

“Pop, Pop, Pop” the shots will ring.

The smell of smoke he’ll remember,

The taste of blood he’ll dread.

Yet, all will begin to look upon him

Even though I will be left for dead.

—

“Enough is Enough!” they’ll scream

Not understanding what it means to be me.

For I am the forgotten one, the road less traveled

The one they forget about when the world unravels.

—

The other child, shot in a school, is whom they’ll see,

Not me, no, never me.

—

My body still sits there, as motionless as a tree

The frigid wind blows as blood begins to pool around my knee

I lie there, dead, dying.

—

No one will ever hear my story.

A tale of drugs, death, and danger they’ll say.

They’ll never understand my innocence, the toll on my family

I leave behind everything, everyone.

Yet, nonetheless, I draw attention from none.

—

Empathy, they say, speaks for all.

Rich or poor, black or white.

There is no discrimination,

Or means for selection.

—

It’s in all of us they say,

To feel the plight of others.

But, I’ll still lay there dying,

Never hearing that empathy I so markedly deserve.

—

There will be no midnight vigil, nor rally nor speech.

No attention drawn toward me.

I will lay there, still and lifeless in the cold.

—

Most everyone won’t hear about me,

I’ll just become another fifth-page story.

Yet, all the attention will be drawn to that child.

That precious, white child.

—

Because how could he, he die?

A perfect child they’ll say –

One that should’ve never been put in harm’s way.

—

But I’ll still lay there dying,

Lifeless and cold

Watching from above

As my story is never told.