Hey everyone! I come to you this week in a vulnerable space. It is a hard time to be a black American right now and forever. I meditate on all the ways we transform for this society, all the ways we morph into what white America expects of us. The ways that white supremacy rip us apart, this is one of those ways…the biggest one.
Daunte Wright, a father to a beautiful two-year-old baby boy, beloved son and partner was shot by a police officer. Just nearing the end of a trial for Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, in the same city.
These devastating murders, being in the exact nature of the results of white supremacy that black parents everywhere prepare their children for. This is every black parents’ worse nightmare. The worst thing has happened, and it happens in black communities across America every single day. The death of one is grief for us all.
I don’t know that there are any words to mend the gash of loss in our community. I’m going to just leave you with this poem I wrote last summer after the tragic loss of George Floyd.
Today it is for Daunte. May you rest in love, we will not forget your name.
AN ODE TO BLACK BODIES:
To carve the world out in colour theory.
Both love and anger anchored in red and reimagined in blue.
Synesthesia in a two dollar du-rag. A kanekalon fever dream in fear of green gasses.
This earth will melt my bones into gray grass.
This skin will seep into soil to shoot through the cracks in the concrete.
A flower to kiss the feet of a world that wants me dead.
Saturation or surrender.
Is this the part where I put my hands up?
Is this the part where we hold hands?