The Children

The Children, home for months, 

climb onto small ladders to forage in pantries, 

get goldfish crackers from the top of the fridge. 

The Children construct a kingdom, 

sheets and couch cushions, 

corners of blankets held down with books.  

What lasts until it gets torn down, bodies 

gather round a head lamp's flame, splitting snacks, 

this hushed, shadow place. 

Shaking cans of spray paint 

in the garage, The Children stencil 

their signs. One says, I luv my Blak Cusins 

and I dont wnt dem to di,

another sharpies an orange peace sign. 

This is what democracy looks like, 

masks up, small fists raised. 

The Children are statues 

on the corner, staring down the police line. 

Still somehow they jump curbs 

on green scooters and, in spite of the SUV's screech, 

don't die. They spend the pandemic summer barefoot, 

biosphere of sidewalk and side yard, trade in talk, dimes,  

fruit snacks, luxury of mosquito-ridden time. 

The Children's government is fair and made for sharing, 

all the toys brought out onto the grass, lined up 

on the drive. Who needs what, they ask, each room's contents 

available and up for grabs, goods passed easily, 

and for free, from open hand to open hand. 

On that Night in March

I was sleeping eighty-eight miles away. But tonight, I watched a video, heard audio of two teenage girls as they peer down on the boyfriend of their neighbor from a second story window, say is that the dude that be in that black charger? His hands, clenched tight, were empty. His feet bare, on the left of the frame, two flights of exterior stairs.

In the video the horrible dog sounds echo out, every apartment door a shut mouth. I know from other articles online that some of the doors were shot through with eyeholes, indicators of what was not announced.

I heard the girls recognize the man. The cops bark WALK BACKWARDS, as he cries, I'm trying. He's on his knees between vehicles, the video's sideways some of the time. In pixelated footage, I take in this Springfield Dr apartment complex, its two stories, the steps the kind a person can see through. What I'm saying is the window was opened a crack and the girls seemed to be kneeling, what else could they do, hiding themselves, holding the phone up, up past the sill. 

Acknowledge in my distance the information they didn't have that night: it's going down, they say, they got SWAT out here and everything. This is the only record, no body cams activated, the police report blank. This is the only three minutes we can see. 

I imagine the moment that preceded the phone being turned on, when the officer's shots snapped these girl's necks off their pillows, late hour surprise and gunshots knocked hard into stomach pits, the heart's thump, thick against their ribs. 

It was early March, pre-pandemic lockdown, imagine these two girls, next to each other in the dark, pulling out the phone, on the wall behind them, sharp flashes of light: white, then blue, then red. When they said, what's going on out here dog, this is crazy, where's he at? the girl held the cell phone higher than her head. 

On that night in March, I was eighty-eight miles away in my neighborhood sleeping when the plainclothes cops knocked open Breonna's door with a battering ram, fired blindly through her walls, and windows, and the windows and doors of apartments above and below her floor. I was probably dreaming of nothing when they laid her down with seven bullets on her carpet in the hall. I was not the one holding up a phone peeking into the parking lot asking who they got this time? Not the one to not know she was already gone. The audacity of my undisturbed sleep. Imagine the Black pen always having to keep its never-ending receipts. 

The video is mostly parking lot, three minutes of white light, a froth of dogs, cops' shouts. I didn't have to keep my camera pointed in the same direction as the guns. We know now this was after he had kneeled and cried out, BRE!, called 911, called her mom, and Breonna, she was already made to be gone.

I, and so many others, are months too late. The girls in this video wait with a hunger of shared history for the man the guns are trained on to walk backwards out and into the frame. To see his face, know his name. 

***the video referenced in this poem can be viewed here.