From August 27, 2020

I keep trying to paint and write and laugh and live like another Black man (this time man, but not always man) did not just get shot. Like me ignoring the video and posts is going to mean I'm not traumatized by it. A white man's bullet is always the monkey that stops the show. Whether we admit it or not. That poem or story that was going to be about sex and lilies has turned a corner. That call to the homie that was going to have us both bustin' up has us enraged. No human body is meant to hold this. FOR THIS LONG. Because it's not just the shooting. It's all the ways we are to blame for getting shot, stomped on, killed. How many higher selves can we be? I'm tired of dropping my son off at work and watching him walk into the building like I look back at my car when I park in a sketchy neighborhood. This whole country is sketchy and you and I and our children are shiny Teslas. With keys inside. Asking for it. 'Cause ain't we? Ain't we always asking for it? Ain't we always begging to be brutalized? Shouldn't we know better by now? What we be thinking? Walking down the street, playing in a park, sitting on a couch, sleeping in a bed. My therapist says that I don't process trauma the way most people do. Maybe she's right. She says I experience a traumatic event and it keeps recycling in my brain. It never really gets worked out. That's why I can be driving or walking or whatever and remember something and then my body experiences it like it's happening now. But what if it is happening now? What if it keeps happening? How is Trayvon not Emmitt? How is Emmitt not George? How is Sandra not Oscar? It actually is recycling. How about there has never been another way in this country? Ever! How about when we do respond with the only language that gets any attention, we are the problems? We are the thugs and criminals. Then we gotta go to work, to the store, home to our apartments and neighborhoods. We gotta see them. We gotta see them looking at us crazy. We gotta see them clutch purse. Ain't nobody got time to be depressed this week! Like rent ain't due tomorrow! I'm tired y'all. And I'm tired of sayin' I'm tired. I'm real mad too. And this anger is eating me up.