I'm Adelimo and this is The Slowdown.

On May 24th, an 18-year-old shot and killed 19 children and two teachers in a fourth-grade

class in Uvalde, Texas. 21 lives taken and it seems too much to write about. Talk about.

Even talking about grief feels too hard. There are moments when language fails and this

is one of them. The children in my life are already going through so much. They are dealing

with the pandemic, the worsening climate crisis, a storm of various anxieties, a country

divided and turning in on itself. And on top of all of that, they are subjected to lockdown

drills in their classrooms and being raised amid the fear of what could happen at any moment

in the United States, the apparent land of the free. I always try to turn toward the light

a little bit in these episodes. I believe in the power of hope. I don't believe in giving up.

I think giving up is when things get much worse. I think about the Toni Morrison quote,

I know the world is bruised and bleeding and though it is important not to ignore its pain,

it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.

Today's poem does not ignore the pain, rather it faces it. I love this poem for the way it

bravely explores how we are handing our children a broken world. Poem for my children born

during the sixth extinction by Laura Crestay. The first things kids learn in school are the seasons.

By now they already know their colors, maybe even their last names. My children will learn

hurricane and wildfire. It is summer and then it is winter. They won't know the sweet weeks of

early June, honeysuckle, wearing a sundress without sweat pooling behind a knee, maybe even a little

cold at night. They might not know bumblebees, not personally. Polar bears they'll read about

like dinosaurs. We'll still have the old-fashioned disasters, a broken elbow, split lip.

I'll try not to scare them, but when I see them eating unwashed grapes, I'll tell them about

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