Today

I have been trying to write about this for the past couple days and can’t seem to package this grief as coherently as I would like. Something about it feels like an undoing past the point of already being undone. Headlines, led by the white gaze, full of the latest lynching of a Black person who displays enough innocence for national outrage and enough potential for an acknowledgement of a loss. A video confirmation of a murder and a family outcry as an extension of love. This is not a surprise, we have been here before — making martyrs out of men who, assumably, did not ask for exaltation, just life and life ahead of them.

When I was seventeen a teacher of mine tried to prepare my class for understanding America. He took the bible and used it to prop up gun rights and then used the alter he created to bow to law enforcement he swore was just. Talking about safety, fear and correct judgment of threats that deserve to be shot in the center of their mass, god was a source of legitimacy that couldn’t be questioned as long as god hated those he did too.

Recently I have said goodbye to some Black men who were also instructed by that same teacher and, like me, traveled to America to study. They’re still alive but we aren’t us anymore and I worry the next time I let them go will be through a eulogy forced by law enforcement determined to make a warning out of a life. Can you blame me for prematurely grieving? Can you blame me for trying to hold on as long as I have?

The night I heard of Amir Locke’s murder I stayed awake until 4am, my mind on the door…