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what it takes to look

this grief is profound.

the pace is so fast now – today i haven’t been able to catch up with either my life or the names and stories of black death.

no, it’s not that i couldn’t catch up, it’s that i am trying to avoid the news.

but i can feel the weight piling up against the door and i know i will open it soon with my always-soft bruised gut and let the new names pummel me.

(when should i do this?)

i stay off social media (because i believe in what i am doing and) if i open those blue apps i just see what those in blue have done and i never want to believe it, and i know that if i look towards them or i look away they will keep shooting.

but i can’t look away, but i can’t look yet.
(i’m having a good day. is that shameful? is that radical?)

but then i need to know and i want to hear it from people i trust and the door is curving towards me under the weight of black stories or just curving away from the weight of black bodies and any minute now i will know and anyways no minute is safe and these precious black bodies didn’t choose this minute ever.

on each phone call and in every space i enter i wear my #blackband but i have not whispered the newest names into its folds and i swear this wisp of cloth the color of the known universe still gets heavier on my skin.

i can hear it in black voices and see it on our faces – what if (what happens when) we can’t take anymore? what if (what happens when) i can’t take anymore? do we (can we) stagger this trauma and grief?

no.

we hold it, hold it off or hold it close or hold it in shaking hands like a defensive weapon or just hold it up saying why and what the fuck and where can we be and how do we sing our babies to sleep with this weight in our throats?

the door creaks and shudders as the full black lives bang bang bang against it and i sit here doing the shit out of my to-do list with my heart fluttering around trying to get my house in order for newborn ghosts who didn’t want to come, who only want to be home again.

i feel black grief permeate my dreams and thicken in my mouth before i even hear the news. some days even the sun is heavy, even the pale blue sky looks guilty.

when i open the door and look, it is not because i am brave. no one chooses this, no one is brave in this way. some days i run towards the sound at the door, some days i run away (away is a myth, away never lets me stay gone).

we are black bodies and the connection forged amongst us is profound – feeling each other as souls and stories, we are singular and collective grievers.

the way we survive is the only way i can open that door: unconditional love. immediately loving each new name beyond judgment, the way i know i will be loved when they swallow me up with bullets or sugar or grief or madness.

(your fucking anthems are not louder than this infinite grief, born of this infinite love.)

with a heart full of rage, i open the door. with a heart so full, i welcome terence crutcher, i welcome keith lamont scott. i welcome justin carr, killed while i was writing this. i welcome the masses, lost from us and found, become ancestors since last i looked.

i will carry the weight of you, and let it change me. we will carry the weight of all of you, and we will let it change us.

your life, your dearly beloved black life, is profound.