How many deaths does it take for someone else to live?

How many prayers must go up for someone to be saved 

When it's already too late

When they have have already been damned by the same ones

Who wanted them gone ten seconds ago

How many shots fired must I witness

Before I am along with them

Lying peacefully on the ground

Crooked and twisted

Just a name on someone's hit list

Freedom is a fickle thing

It's a double edged sword

Ready to cut all our throats

We believe we are free because a piece of paper said so

While that same piece of paper was used to enslave people like me though

Abolished for good reasons 

So I could live with the same liberties not really

A piece of paper is not stone 

And is suppose to be amended 

But that has seem to be forgotten and certain crimes are condoned

While innocents lay dead in empty bathroom stalls

While a man pulls his trigger and lets his rain of bullets fall 

His fate sealed but he’s on a mission

Not from God, but his own profane agenda

A chorus of angels weep as he paints the floors with a dark and heinous magenta

I chuckle when people confuse freedom with perogative

Freedom is not the right to carry

Freedom is not the right to shoot

Freedom is not being scared 

To step out outside to be who you are 

freedom is misconstrued

Misunderstood

Dilated with old opinions and beliefs 

That owning a gun is for the greater good

When all I see is death on my television screen

My heart ripples and punctures

And my soul drains from its core

Until it's empty and torn

I swallow my tears when my family whispers what a shame 

I shatter completely as the channel is changed 

How many more days must I live in the closet

Cramped and scared

Wishing for someone to give a damn 

Because i've been preached to 

That no one would accept me 

At seventeen

I’m scared of five things

The police

old men

Guns

Being abandoned

And death

I’m a triple minority 

Black 

A woman

And Bisexual

And some people still believe that I don't even exist

A small ripple in the water 

Where tidal waves drown

Out the small towns

That are now seven feet deep underground 

Where they’re voices no longer make sound