Thoughts and Prayers Don’t Stop Bullets

By Breckyn Forcey

There is a church
with blood in the pews.
A grocery store
with candles in the parking lot.
A sidewalk
chalked with names
we never meant to memorize.

There is a country
where it’s easier
to get a gun
than a therapist.
Where grief
is a recurring payment,
and funerals
are just another part
of the routine.

They tell us
it’s tragic.
They tell us
it’s senseless.
But they never call it what it is,
intentional.

Policy
is a kind of prayer too.
But we’ve been kneeling
to profit
for decades.

This is not chaos.
This is capitalism
with a trigger finger.

And the news cycle spins:
Another shooting.
Another vigil.
Another AR-15 marketed like freedom.
While somewhere,
a mother is picking out a casket
instead of a birthday cake.

This isn’t just about mass shootings.
It’s about the slow bleed,
the everyday violence
in zip codes
no cameras visit.

It’s about the boy
on his porch
with Skittles in his pocket
and fear in his shadow.

It’s about the father
walking home from work
in the wrong color hoodie.

It’s about the girl
caught in crossfire
on a street
that politicians only name
when they need talking points.

It’s about the silence
after the sirens,
the way we scroll past tragedy
like it’s traffic.

We’ve gotten so used to dying,
we treat survival
like an accident.

They say
“Now’s not the time.”
But now
has already buried
too many someones.

We are running out of room
for names on murals,
out of breath
for eulogies
that sound too much
like last week’s.

We are tired
of being told
to be resilient.
Tired
of being asked
to be quiet
when the bullets
never are.

I want to live
in a country
where a car backfiring
doesn’t make a whole sidewalk flinch.

Where concerts
sound like joy,
not crossfire.

Where people
don’t bleed out
on linoleum floors
while strangers tweet
"thoughts and prayers."

Because thoughts
do not stop bullets.
And prayers
do not stitch wounds.

What we need
is legislation
with a spine.

What we need
is a government
that values life
more than lobbyists.

What we need
is to stop pretending
this is normal.
Because it's not.

It never was.

Somewhere,
a survivor is writing down
the license plate
of their own grief.

Somewhere,
a city rebuilds
its heartbeat
out of shattered glass
and candle wax.

Somewhere,
a child is learning
what to do
when the world
decides they don’t matter.

But we matter.

We are the breath
behind the scream.
We are the voice
rising up
from bloodstained pavement
saying: No more.

And we
are not done
rising.