Hi. I’m not usually one to do this, but I’ve been following your work for a long time and wanted to let you know that your words continue to hold me up in heavy moments. The way you move towards feeling, wading into it, helps me do the same. To be less afraid of where words might take me. To have faith that I can move through the dark places without getting lost there anymore…. I wrote this piece a few days after Michael Brown was shot and killed—-even though all I really wanted to do was wrap my arms around the people I love, this was the closest I could get in the moment.
I will not wear my whiteness like a shield.
Stand behind it while boys are dying.
Use it to forget that mothers
will wake up with out sons
and that no sunrise
will ever be the same.
I will not wear my whiteness like a shield.
Turn away from the pain of knowing
my dad will never be hit
by this kind of gunfire.
Of knowing that people I love
might die in daylight.
No time is safe.
No place is safe.
Red keeps spilling
from brown
the blue line is thick
with fear and
star-spangled means
we only sing
about white light.
Even though
light, real light,
is born of color.
Except now,
those colors ignite
the candle at late night vigils,
spark flames that
refuse to be put out.
I will not wear my whiteness like a shield.
I will fracture that lie until I remember
the blue on my grandma’s cheek.
The red lines on my mom’s meds.
The brown of too many caskets.
Until I remember that real light
is born of color.
I hope you’ll write that story, and so many others.
The world needs your voice.
