In the evening, I work story problems with my daughter If a teacher has 25 students, and 312 raffle tickets How would she divide them evenly between them? And what will be left over? (So much will be left over) I don’t even hassle my kid about how raffle tickets are bought, not given (So much has been bought not given) Not like the one story problem where alligators ate blueberry pie Alligators don’t eat pie, I said, not vegetarian pie That’s ridiculous She laughed at me, and got the salt, and shook it all over the page You’re salty She’s a product of her age (So much is, even me) This is her age: 17 die in Florida 28 in Sandy Hook 13 in Colorado I don’t even think she remembers Sandy Hook I remember I stood outside the back door of the elementary school with other parents, and we were red-rimmed and leaking We talked about how it felt like Columbine, and 9/11, and the Challenger explosion How those 20 dead children hit air and fluoresced And we were left with hard blue streaks just behind our eyelids that could not be got out with rubbing (Could not be got out with anything) We caught up our children and hugged them so hard they told us we were weird. You’re weird, mom, let me go. Here’s a story problem: Two students walk into a school with guns and bags of explosives One man kills his mom and then walks into a school with a gun One man walks into a school with a gun One teacher uses himself as a shield One student stands in a doorway to usher others to safety One student sits on the floor and cries One student calls her mom One student runs with his hands up One student jumps out the window One student didn't go to school that day, because she had strep, and her inbox fills with horror Here’s the answer: Children die Children die Children die All story problems are exponential and something like infinite Because no parent can resolve their data set to one When that one is dead on a school hallway floor That dead child is neither anecdote nor data, but something worse: It is a dead child. Dead children are no answer They are the beginning of a logarithm that curves up Into the reckoning of our brutal calculus (Originally written Feb 22, 2018, after the Stoneman Douglas high school shooting.)