I should not have watched the video.
I should not have clicked the hashtag trail that lead me to your tombstone.
I should have grieved you as distant black woman.
But I cannot stay distant black woman.
When anger and hurt and fear all make parading music inside this chest.
I did not have the sound on.
I did not want to hear your pleas or their yelling lies into your identity.
I only saw white holding onto black bear, while still.
While still trying to prove:
Though big, NOT A THREAT.
My body heaved forward when I saw the way the bullet undid your 37 years of life.
Took dignity, took breath.
Took father from son.
And husband from wife.
You are the 100th... No the 500th ... No the numbers have gone rapid and without proper watch because they are spiraling out of control.
But WE are not spiraling out of control.
We have not burned down bridges.
We have tried instead to cross them.
We have not threatened lives we are just trying to save our own.
When was it that you took us for threats?
Took us as war on your country so that you must genocide black people.
When did our melanin become the picture for your insecurities?
Did our educated tongue and demand to be human make your supremacy flinch?
My father: though big, NOT A THREAT.
My mother: black skin, black woman, black strong.
My brother: tall, lean, and black.
My sisters: beautiful, magic, and black.
They are my blood.
They are this blood.
That at anytime could be massacred on sidewalks filmed in phones.
This is the only way to mark this history.
This is the only way to prove that we still exist.
We are still here.
We are still pleading.
Tired, but pleading.
Tired OF pleading.
And it terrifies me to love a black man because is that not the same as strapping a ticking time bomb to your heart and waiting for the timer to go off? Is it not the same as holding onto something that the world says you cannot have?
Feels like pre-made noose around my family tree that I have yet to add my own branches to.
Feels like giving birth to ashes because I fear my children will never know what life looks like without death taunting on our doorsteps.
I was made black.
I was born from black. And I AM black.
I am Loud Voice because instead of lungs, God gave me a megaphone.
And He nudged me.
After so many times.
After so many deaths.
After so many names.
He tugged me. Said:
"When are you going to use this voice that I have given you to shake people into feeling?
Shake the separation from our tongues and do your best to bring unity back into these hands?"
A few weeks ago... my family and I - we went to a restaurant, we sat. I grabbed their hands, we bowed our heads and closed our eyes to pray, and I wondered:
"What if we don't open them again?
What if this is the last time that we close them again?
Because someone decides that we are not as human as them.
That we are 'Threat.'
That we are mass destructions posed as humbled heads."
How much more will we weep?
How many lives will have hashtags for tombstones?
Do we need to scream louder?
"We are human! We are human!
We are alive. We are real.
And we are HUMAN."
Perhaps this will all cease and we will finally know peace.
When there are enough tears so that we all start drowning.
I do not know if you pray.
I do not know how you pray.
But if this does not bring us to bended knees,
Then I don't know what mercy was made for.
And lately.
Lately, my prayers have sounded a lot like:
Jesus when you come, can you tell them:
That you created them, too.
You created us, too.
"I made them, too.
They are not taking up more space than they have intended to."
Our bodies do not spell out "WAR."
We just want to know that we can fall asleep.
Wake up the next day.
And not have to have our black look like less.
Less human.
We want to sit down at our dinner tables.
And not have to mourn over another lost brother or sister.
When you sit at your dinner tables,
Do you mourn? Over another lost brother or sister?
Jesus when you come back can you just tell them one thing.
Tell them:
"I created them, too.
I made them, too.
They are not taking up more space than they have intended to."
Our bodies do not spell out "WAR."
So please.
Hands up.
Don't shoot.
- Arielle Estoria