At What Age Do They Stop Making All the Kids Give each other Valentines?, and other Motherly ?s

Flags are half-mast
in my small little towne,
the kind of place so quaint
it is towne with an e
where the townies all
have known each other since kindergarten (my son is in kindergarten, you know)
and the old wounds and slights grow and fester..
(i already know who the school shooter in his class will be HA Ha ha ha haha...........)

the wounds grow and fester
and mature
in our tiny adorable little petri dish of a towne

Told from an early age that they were odd
Our children, or some of them at least,
Were told they were different, growing to know
Nobody would ever love them, Never choose them first or even second or third
        or anything but last for the team,
        Never ask them to the prom
        Never stop teasing them for being weird, odd, surly
        Never send them a Valentine
Everyone knows, Everyone laughs, Everyone jokes about who the next school shooter will be,
        Even me

Now don't get me wrong; I have no sympathy for the school shooter,
the evil,
Godless
turd.
Trust me, I have all the appropriate emotions about
this latest
Valentine's Day Massacre--
I honor the victims, hate the evildoer....
and maybe I even have just the right smidgen of outrage...
all the failures of the system...
Maybe I can get angry at the NRA and voice some comfortingly vague critique of big gov't
     and big money and the guns that fuel it all...
Oh But I promise I don't mean the hunter's guns!
The ones I hear illegally hunting on the wildlife refuge where I live,
where my son plays outside, the woods his playground
I promise I don't mean those hard-working men just honoring the traditions of their fathers...
Not THOSE guns...
those guns couldn't possibly belong to the men who may someday kill my child
as he and his classmates cower by the cubbies,
he and his little friends trying hard to cry quietly so no one can hear them,
just as they've been taught

BUT maybe these men have other guns at home,
and sons,
sons who have learned to cry so quietly no one can hear them,
sons who may kill my son...
and I'm just looking for the right person to blame
so no one turns their sights on me
and my son
my son,
who is learning to cry so quietly
no one can hear him.