you may have been inquisitive
an aspiring electrician
curious about internal wiring
an existing structure
the frame, its knotted veins
a building in progress
in neighborhood streets, viewed as a violation
on familiar sidewalks, stalked as a target
did you know the trees?
did you recognize the truck?
all white everything
White Men
White Family
White Rage
White Violence
White Supremacy
hunted, chased, cornered
from a jog to a fight
shot three times and still swinging
broad daylight
strange how strangers like you
become haunting stories and gut-wrenching scenes
a modern-day lynching
and yet most didn’t know for weeks
maybe time is a necessary ingredient for change
but you were killed before your time
when many didn’t even pretend
having not yet been forced to change
february, pre-quarantine
the majority were still
too distant
too dumb
or too numb
or too preoccupied to see
how deeply we needed to grieve
eventually, like Mike Brown
in cap and gown
your smile was shared
a black tie affair
a visage of Black life
before, a gesture to more
than cell phone videos of
trauma and death
still
at the hands of police
some posted selfies
jogging in your name
but the quiet, the passive
was all too common
all so painfully mundane
followed by recusals, latent affiliations
within corrupt precincts
governed by the status quo
in what should have been Stacey Abrams’s state
the cruelty 2020 put on display
thoroughly
mercilessly
captured by the details of your death
attended to by most
hardly, and only after the fact
as a foreshadow, a precursor, a signal dismissed
before George Floyd died without gunshots
before Freedom Summer burned and swelled with rage
before denial soaked eyes opened up
to collective cries to protect Black lives
you had family and friends
but we remember you, Ahmaud Arbery
when we say her name, Breonna Taylor
as if those similarly murdered
are destined to forever be
willfully, callously
your closest kin