[Y]oung Writers Project issued a challenge to write about the Orlando mass shooting and received many poignant responses. Here is a sample of the writing, including a letter by Ella Staats of Burlington to Sen. Leahy. Ella’s letter so moved the senator that he read it on the floor of the U.S. Senate. See the video here.
Writing Challenge: Orlando – The world is mourning the loss of 49 innocent individuals at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., early on June 12. Share what you’re thinking. What is on your mind today?
Dear Congressman
By Ella Staats, Age 15, Burlington
[A]fter feeling so much pent-up frustration and sadness over the Orlando shootings, I felt I had to do something. I stand by and watch so many terrible shootings like this one as they unfold, but this was too much. I wrote this letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, and I plan to send it to as many Congresspeople as I can. I urge everyone to take a stand, to be vocal, to do something. The only way anything will ever change is if we push for it.
Dear Senator Leahy,
I am a Vermont teen who has been deeply saddened by the Orlando shooting. I am enraged at this terrible act of targeted violence against the LGBT+ community, saddened by the immense loss of life, and mourning for the victims and their families.
It is time that the gun laws in our country were completely reformed. It is time that people with such senseless hatred cannot commit such a terrible crime so easily.
I would expect and, frankly, hope that you and every Congressperson around the United States are receiving thousands more letters like this one.
Because something needs to change.
I am a teenager growing up in a world where, at 15, I have already seen so many mass shootings that it is becoming harder and harder to faze me.
But the homophobia, and the scale of this attack deeply disturb me. I may not know everything about politics, but I am urging you to please, please do something. Something big.
This may not be a long letter, but I hope I have gotten my point across.
I am tired of excuses. I am tired of waiting. I am tired because I know this is not the last awful shooting I will see in my lifetime. Unless this government finally steps up and makes a change, this will continue to be the norm.
And a country where something like the Orlando shootings is commonplace is not a country I want to spend the rest of my life in.
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No longer feeling
By Sophia Cannizzaro, Age 16, West Glover
[I] do not feel affected. I think I am no longer feeling when people are dying.
I think I have seen so many people die that I no longer consider it wrong or unusual.
We just die. That’s what we do.
I am indirectly responsible for many, many deaths and because
I live on land governed by a ‘super-power’ government, I don’t have to
take responsibility for that. But I give the government money in return for the whatever-it-is that they provide
and that whatever-it-is involves killing innocent people. And they are terrified
when these airplanes which represent me
drop bombs on their heads.
I suppose that means that if someone were to murder me,
I wouldn’t really be an innocent victim.
We die for a lot of reasons and they’re all so complex, and I try to name them just and unjust, reasonable and ridiculous, productive and pointless, and it seems to work but then I think about it and I realize
people just die. Some death is relatively comfortable and some death is excruciating, some is symbolic, and it’s all just dying.
And I suppose I might feel more empathy if I wasn’t so tired from empathizing with every person who has ever experienced a tragedy. But I am so tired. There is so much death and I can’t stop to feel alongside everyone else.
This poem is my humanity revealing itself. I wanted to write something appropriately sentimental and supportive,
something that would make people think of me as a kind and thoughtful person
but I can’t care anymore.
It’s just another event in a sequence of events called life that has dulled my heart and made me uninvolved in my life as a segment of humanity.
I can’t tell if that makes me terrible or honest. Maybe both.
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It’s too big
By Isidora Bailly-Hall, Age 14, Burlington
[W]e were having a party
when my mom checked her Facebook
and saw
50 dead in Orlando on this 12th of June,
53 more injured.
The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history,
they told me.
As much as I try to understand,
this moment feels too big for children like me.
I wasn’t alive for 9/11.
I couldn’t tell you a thing about Columbine
other than that it was a tragedy.
But does that word even begin to capture
moments such as these?
I am sad,
but I do not know if that is just because I know that is how I am supposed to feel
or if I am just in shock.
No matter how I think about it,
this doesn’t feel real.
I can’t fathom 10 of my friends dead;
it’s just too much,
but it doesn’t begin to represent how these people feel.
How can I be empathetic, sympathetic,
when I do not understand even a fraction of their pain?
Moments like these are just too big
for kids like me.
I wonder if I’ll remember what I
was doing as vividly as when I asked my grandfather about the shooting of JFK.
Is this a turning point in my life
or just another fly on the wall?
Will this be the moment I tell my children about?
My grandchildren?
If this is just the beginning, I shudder to think about what is yet to come.
I can’t tell you I don’t care about why this happened,
because I do.
But I do think the attention on the murderer
is why this happened in the first place,
and if we worry about the victims instead,
we’ll be a whole lot better off.
Every time we point out the attacker(s)
or why they attacked,
we are giving them more power
and helping them achieve their goals.
Stop focusing on the murderer, and start focusing on the victims,
the ones that need our help.
Every time I think about this I can’t help
but come back to the casualties,
too many for our country to deal with,
and definitely too many for me.
No matter how hard I try to understand,
moments like these are just too big for
kids like me.
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I am queer
By Ava Kendrick, Age 17, Waitsfield
[I] am queer.
I am queer, from my head to my toes,
I am queer in the pit of my stomach,
out to my elbows and my lips,
queer in my shoulders and my kneecaps.
I am queer.
I am proud.
I am proud of this being,
proud I can bind my chest flat or,
on occasion, slip on a dress.
I am proud of me,
of being able to realize it was wrong to say I was a woman,
that it was wrong to say I liked boys,
that I was wrong to try to fit into a false self.
I am proud to say I do not fully understand my identity:
I am proud to know I am learning to love my me.
I am proud.
I am terrified.
I am terrified for my friends,
I am terrified for my future.
I am terrified of the day someone tells me I do not belong,
of the day I am attacked for entering a restroom,
of the day the wrong person sees my girlfriend and I holding hands,
picks up their second-amendment-assured assault rifle
to destroy beauty that they do not understand.
I am terrified of the day I am killed/beaten/harrassed/abused for love,
terrified of the future that is increasingly smaller for people like me,
I am terrified.
I am tired.
I am tired of being told who I should be:
I am tired of laws directing me to the woman’s room,
laws passed out of fear of me.
I am tired of hearing that people fear me;
of people saying queer people are the ones to be afraid of,
when we are the ones who should be afraid:
At 2 AM on a Sunday,
forty-nine people were murdered in a mass shooting at a gay club.
People were actively sought-out and killed,
shot while they danced,
shot while they ran,
shot while they hid in bathrooms,
the very place we are told they are most likely to be a threat.
I am tired of hearing that queer people are a threat.
I am tired.
I am tired.
I am so very, very tired.
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Orlando
By Hailey Swett, Age 15, Norwich
[H]e called for a moment of silence
To remember
To think about the differences we can make
…the horrible thing
…Orlando
What was he talking about?
What happened now?
Silence
Knowledge is power
But oblivion is bliss
I learned
An hour or two later
Mentioned in one graduation speech
Fifty people killed
Fifty people dead
…Gay bar
…
Orlando
My whole being heavy
No anger
No surprise
Just disappointment
Grief
Helplessness
Panic
Why does this keep happening?
What will this world become?
We are not safe anymore
This much I know
Where is the love they all say is more powerful?
Someone show me where the love has gone
Explain to me how this hate was born
What am I supposed to do?
How can I just sit here and do nothing?
How can I bring the love back?
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Forget
By Sylvan Williams, Age 14, Middlesex
[I] woke up to a gun shot,
bright orange noise ringing in my ears.
My eyes opened for the first time to blood,
bleaching the horizon on all sides
of a bigger cube than that which I had shattered.
I lived for the first time to people with ignorance
running through their bodies like a virus.
They turned their backs on the things they couldn’t fathom,
in a burning fit of terror,
and then they forgot.
They forgot, and they let it happen again.
And then they forgot.
And then they forgot.
Forgot.
Forgot.
And now I can’t forget.
Because the blood that stains the horizon
is all too real.
And the screams in my head still ring in my ears,
that I will never forget.
But the shards from the sky will become too sharp.
And they will cover the blood on the horizon.
And I will forget.
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Check out the June/July issue of The Voice, the Young Writers Project monthly digital magazine. Click here.
