Peace-Sign Sweatshirt
Upstairs from a Presbyterian church,
a third-floor Montessori school
opened its doors to children
with disabilities, poor kids, delinquents,
and misfits like me.
We were given complete freedom,
while teachers sat
in classroom corners,
smoking endless cigarettes.
Miss Terry puffed on Eves.
Her lipstick-smeared cylinders
featured rows of dainty flowers,
dancing as they drew
closer to destruction.
When the Kent State shootings happened,
we stretched out on the classroom floor,
newspapers spread before us
like a terrible banquet. Miss Terry cried,
tears drenching her cigarette,
until it finally went out.
“Promise me one thing,” she sobbed.
“Don’t ever fight for this country.”
One by one, we gave our vows.
Each student swore refusal.
The United States military
would not get our assistance.
Every day that year, I wore
a peace-sign sweatshirt to school.
If I wished hard enough, perhaps
people would quit murdering each other.
Leah Mueller‘s work is published or forthcoming in Rattle, Certain Age, Writers Resist, Beach Chair Press, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has received several nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. One of her short stories appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. Her fourteenth book, “A Pretty Good Disaster” was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2025. Check out more of her work at substack.com/@leahsnapdragon.
