The Cycle of a Gunshot

By Valentina Watkins
12th grade | Oakton High School | Herndon, Virginia
Third-place young adult contest winner, Global Health category

With lines from “One Bullet Can Kill, but It Takes More Than 100 People To Save a Gunshot Victim’s Life” by James Sprankle, Paige Skinner, and Kate Bubacz, a Pulitzer Center-supported story

In the echoes of sirens, a body
falls faster than scoop and run rescues.
One bullet takes 100 people.
From victim’s call to surgeon’s light,
from blood to paperclip, bandage to beating heart,
a fragile thread is fiercely woven among chaos.
Many souls mending what a split-second
shoots apart.
One bullet, 100 faces.
Each swearing it won’t happen again.
Yet the echo circles back through streets and
their silence before the storm,
through waiting rooms and midnight prayers.
Hands pressing against wounds, voices calling out,
a chain of strangers becomes a lifeline.
Time stretches thin between loss and hope,
each second and breath are mercy.
Where sirens fade out they grow loud elsewhere.
A cycle that pushes its way into a surgeon’s hands.

Valentina Watkins is a freshman at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Virginia with plans to finish an English degree at the University of Virginia. She aspires to pursue a career in publishing and will continue to write as a pastime.

Read more winning entries from the 2026 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.