Corpse Pose

Someone at school has told my seven-year-old about school shooters,
which he spells for me S-C-H-O-O-L space S-H-O-O-T-E-R
because I’ve asked him not to talk about it around his younger siblings
and they’re looking at books at our feet, the baby echoing
every word the four-year-old says in a happy screech.
My thoughts feather away from my lips as I part them,
remembering what a curious toddler he was, asking
What is faster than a bullet? Is a bullet faster than light?
What about a bullet train? He asked questions
near constantly, and when I didn’t know the answers
he’d furrow his eyebrows in frustration. It was birthing
children that made me think about danger and dying.
As a toddler, he did too. Would giggle darkly
when his sibling laid belly-down, chapped cheeks burrowed
into a pillow, They’re being dead. Look, Mama! They are dead.
I can’t write about this any more than I can find an answer
that will satisfy his questioning Why do we live here
if there are shootings? I have to send my children to school,
my home and the two campuses triangulating
the locus of my anxiety. I soothe my child
and tell myself I’m not lying.
There’s no way to do this without risk.
The baby pulls out my yoga mat and performs
an erratic flow–downward dog, raised leg to three-legged dog,
child’s pose, and briefly, lying down in śavāsana,
corpse pose. I cannot find an ending.
Before the children attended school, when I kept them
always by my side and I was their only protector,
my eldest stood in the green shade of our bowing bird of paradise
and asked me, Mama, when will I die? 
I deferred, told him nobody knows, exactly
when or how, and even then he was dissatisfied with ambiguity,
countering, Except the plants. They know when we’ll die.