The Morning After a Murder

I start packing my life up the morning after murder.
I am moving / now / chest still rising and falling
carrying this weight of grief with me
and I don’t know what else will fit inside the suitcase
besides my fury and fear.

We are still here / in the aftermath
of every day
encounters with slave patrols.
Witness to this tragedy
they are hesitant to call genocide

We can’t breathe and that is the point.

---

There are no words strong enough to convey the justified rage burning in my body. I am a fire with nowhere to go. History stays consistent and we stay dying at the whim of officers acting out of body, like they were trained to do. And I am tired of reading eulogies of murdered Black folks that did not survive this white supremacist reign of terror.

I went to the store today and kept my eyes down as I walked. I don’t know how to look complicit people in the eyes anymore for I am afraid they will see an anger they will never be worthy to hold. But the concrete I move on reminds me that it makes graves out of people that look like me. Everywhere I turn I am reminded Black life is on loan and no amount of rent we pay to live in this stolen land will suffice the greedy landlords that are drenched in blood.

There will not be peace without justice. And there will not be justice without the necessary destruction of white supremacy and all it birthed.