Gun Control
She asks me about the second amendment.
The right to bear arms, she explains.
To live in a free country where any citizen has the right to protect themselves.
Yes, I say, thinking very little.
Guns can be controlled.
But protection is a necessity.
That night I roam the online gun shops.
Debate a handgun or a pistol, think about what kind
of metal trap I could carry in my purse on dark streets
in late April. To press tightly next to my notebook and cell phone,
to finally feel safe in a dangerous world.
When I call my father the next day, I almost ask him why we don’t own a gun.
For home safety, I would say. To protect from forces beyond.
But before the words escape my lips,
I remember, too clearly, why.
Reason in the form of locked up pill bottles and cut pieces of rope.
The safe in the basement closet with a code I was not allowed to learn.
Painting shades of darkness around my mentality.
Depression reeking my every dragging motion.
Stability was not a regular occurrence. Devastation came daily.
Guns were created to kill.
They have no other purpose. You can’t use a gun
to open an envelope or to hold your music.
The essence of its creation was to kill.
I think of my parents, their mind’s eye.
Because when your 15 year old daughter
does not know why she wants to live,
you do not show her
the simple means to death.
Because you cared too much to hold me up
to be able to support the easiest thing to send me to the ground.
Maybe one day, in the future, I would feel infinite pain.
I could know how it could be gone in one shot.
How one finger pressure could end my life forever.
Destroy every pin pointed locked and hidden security code.
Depression is a murderer.
And I don’t want to leave a weapon in the hands of my killer.
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