A poem a day for 2015 - for day 144 - for Sandra Bland

1. Your life mattered
Your black body matters
Your words matter
Your mission will live

2. They might remind you that I was vocal about being bipolar and having issues with depression
I have never tried to kill myself
They will tell you that I was in a psych ward but
They will not mention that my depression was not because I wanted die
Just live
Differently

3. It is a shame that black men and women are writing "If I die in custody letters" to the world
This is what we have been reduced to

4. I did not kill myself

5. What do they know about black lives anyway?
What do they know about waiting for sons and daughters to come home anyway?
What do they know about a knee pressed between shoulder blades anyway?

6. I did not kill myself

7. This is the day when they don't bother to make excuses
This is the day of rebel flags waving
This is the day a white man walks into a church and kills nine, lives and gets fed Burger King
And a black woman gets killed in her cell after a traffic stop

8. It wasn't suicide
We didn't believe it with Ron Settles in Signal Hill, California in 1981
We don't believe it with Sandra Bland in Waller County, Texas in 2015

9. They will criminalize my black body
And yours too
They will call out your depression and run ins with the law
As if that justifies your breathless body
They will kill us with our hands cuffed behind our backs
And say our wounds were self inflicted

10. Many will believe them
This is that day
This is that now
Stay woke
Be aware
Our lives matter
Our deaths matter
Our stories matter