Long Way Down

If Gunfight is about the gun debate in America–what you may see through a pair of binoculars in the distance with the laws, the complicated cases, the policy decisions–then Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds is about what tightens within us when gunshots enter lives and take lives.

Someone shoots Will’s older brother, Shawn, and Will is young, frightened, confused, and unknowingly steps in his family’s muddy footprints as he seeks revenge. With a gun, what else? On the elevator ride down his apartment building, he is confronted by ghosts that spread their palms wide and ask him to look at the cost of violence, the cost of revenge, and the cost of anger.

I told Dani
how I remember
Shawn screaming for us to
get down.
How he lay on top of us,
covering us, smashing us
into the dirt.
I told her how I remember staring at her the whole
time.
Her eyes wide, the brightness
dimming. Her mouth, open.
Bubble gum
and blood.