This awful is replay in my cells
1. You argue with your estranged husband
Who hit you before
Abused women before you before
Did you see it in his face
Hear metal hate in his throat
Did the sky turn red
2. You try to escape
Fire warning shot in the air
And your belly
Did you reach for your belly out of habit
Your belly that housed your baby only nine days before
What did you say when you shot the gun
Your lips tense
Eyes all fire and fear
3. You sit in prison gray suit
Inmate
Inmate
Twenty years
Inmate
Black
Woman
Abused
Unprotected
Mother
Inmate
For choosing to not be
Thrown against a wall
To pass out on the floor
Again
4. This will never make sense
What are we supposed to do with this horror
You are the women I know
Yours is the story we fear
Are these the options
Death
Abuse
Jail
5. You are not forgotten
I keep bumping into walls over what to do next
Keep screaming your name
I keep keeping
I keep praying
I keep praying that you keep keeping too
6. I am so sorry
I have words
I have tears
So many tears
My liver and spleen and nose and throat
Are broken to pieces over this
Why you
Why twenty years for you
And George Zimmerman is out on bail
What does Stand your Ground mean
Ain't your ground ground
7. This is the helpless I hate
The what ifs that keep flooding all of my me
8. This is not a poem
These are just words
About my feelings
I cannot control
I have no place for this confusion
This outrage
This again and againing
This being thrown away
What would I have done
What should I tell my nieces
My sisters
9. How will you day by day
Except to day by day
How will I
How will we
What about the next time
A woman
A black woman dares to fight for her life
Refuses to be trapped in a bathroom
Fires shot in the air to get to her baby
Her baby
10. What about now
With all these paranoid black women
Who know that we will be thrown away anyway
Who will not see the point
Of firing shot
For warning
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