Lock Down Drill

The third graders are choosing crayons from the teacher's cache, and passing the beaver-chewed yellow willow stick that looks like a canoe when a woman's stern voice over the intercom says, "We are code red. Teachers, lock down your classrooms." The teacher instructs the children to sit against the wall of drawers, and locks the class door. I tug at the window blind, which doesn't descend past 2/3 closed. A string hangs loose above my head. The teacher brings what she has, a poster, a large box holding a board game, to block more of that window. We join the line of children sitting silently, though some whisper. The teacher says, "you must be totally silent. There is an intruder in the building. We don't want him or her to know we are here." I was in a lockdown drill at an elementary school a few years ago. The kids were far squirrelier than these, I think to myself. I don't know if that's really accurate. I was thinking many things to distract myself from thinking this might be real. I was nervous about how open that window view was. If anyone were outside on that side wishing us ill, that person could aim easily through that huge opening. A girl sat one side of me, a boy on the other. Twenty-five minutes later, when the woman over the intercom informed us the red alert was over, the boy offered his hand to help me up. The teacher told us this had been a drill. She answered questions from the kids. One girl offered, "an intruder can be your father." Time for P.E.; I left the building.

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Maybe a child
falls flat
skins a knee
that awful bump
the silent moment
the wailing
a fall is an abandonment
a surrender
a loss of innocence
as the scab hardens
and falls
will always
have been