Joy, though?
This morning a dear friend sent a loving text — a routine check in and offers of gratitude. It also included news of the murder of another Black person. I don’t know what to do with that. I never know what to do with the knowledge that another Black person was murdered — especially when it’s the result of state-sanctioned violence and elimination of life.
Grief and anger are sown, but I usually don’t have space to cry, to feel. Work must go on. There are no formal bereavement days for all of these amassed dead Black people.
But today, I paused, and, wrote about a section of the complexity Black people must hold. I don’t know why I’m sharing this. I haven’t written and shared anything in a long time. But, this is what I can muster as I must start my workday.
Death by murder
right next to joy.
Holding on to my right to be fully human while she cries out,
“Not my baby boy!”
I struggle to feel — to deal —
to allow the never ceasing and centuries old
mourning of death by murder
steal away my zeal — for life.
And Black woman that I am,
I can’t help but to mourn.
I’m so torn. How can I love
a life, make a good life
encased by disregard’s steely knife? No, more often gun?
I’m so torn. Grandmother
to Black boys I wept when
they were born — for their beauty and promise
as well as fear for their Black teenage boy
and eventual man lives.
That kind of fear has no place at the
news of a birth.
It’s a time to celebrate that
new life’s worth!
Death by murder
right next to joy.
Black people keep shining your light
alongside the fight.
That light is an inheritance
which crossed oceans with our Ancestors.
We are the manifesters, the pupil of the eye.
So yes, alongside my joy
a dead Black body may lie.
Put down the joy to mourn.
Pick it up again no matter how worn.
Joy is my link to humanity
in the midst of racism’s insanity.
Death by murder
right next to my joy.
