It happened during first period; I was in statistics,
sitting in the back and staring out the dark window.
This was back when school started before the sunrise.
I stared at my pale hands and unpainted nails
while the teacher prattled on, calling us children
and demanding we memorize this theory or this formula.

Looking at it now, I wonder if we were all parts of a formula,
as if kids will calculate our lives in future statistics
classes. In one click, we’re reduced to numbers for children
to play with. Some of us died with dark covering the windows;
will that be written out with chalk screaming like nails?
How can you factor not seeing the golden rose sunrise?

It’s poetic, the whole tragedy of dying before a sunrise –
works in with the brutality of a school shooting’s formula.
They burst in with dead eyes the color of rusted nails –
kicked down the door, silent and relentless, into statistics.
The teacher fell silent as I blinked away from the window.
They were only killers and we were only children.

Or maybe we were the killers and they were the children.
They were scared children – scared of the sunrise.
I looked back to the freedom of the window
as I tried to work out what would happen in this formula.
It’s all relative; don’t piss off the gun. I’d seen the statistics
for situations like these – death tolls spike like nails.

I got nervous fast and started biting my nails.
Everyone was scared; they couldn’t sit still, like children.
Never had we been so alert in first period statistics.
They started pulling the trigger ten minutes before sunrise
and I wondered why even death needs a formula.
I stopped breathing when they shot out the window.

The wind was cold as it blew through the broken window;
I shivered and dug my bleeding, bitten-down nails
into my arms. Blankly, I stared at a smeared formula
written on the board. Others cried like silent children
as I noticed the hesitant glow of the morning sunrise.
It was going to end soon; we were all to be statistics.

It’s impossible to explain the detached nature of counting statistics to the mothers mourning sunrise.
The shards of the blood stained window were later cleaned away, piercing the workers’ hands like nails.
The younger children were left curious and sad in the face of life’s careless formula and death’s certainty.