I Can’t Breathe

I can’t breathe.

I read the news. Tears like broken pearls turn the words to watery, bloody, battered smears. Black on white, white on black. It’s all the same. Or at least, it should be.

I can’t breathe.

George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Tony McDade. Freddie Gray. Regis Korchinski-Paquet. Names that carry stories so rich, they were eaten by the hungry. The wrong kind of hunger. Names screamed by protestors dressed in black, throats hoarse from gas and crying. Crying out to any god who may give a damn.

I can’t breathe.

How many throats need to be closed in violent scenes?
How many mouths need to open in unheard screams?
How many guns need to be pulled, when a wallet’s all you need?
How many people need to die at the hand of hate and greed?

I can’t breathe.

Running. Shopping. Bird-watching. Sleeping. Driving. Playing video games. Complying. Some call it living life. Some call it their cause of death.

I can’t fucking breathe.

Rubber bullets should hit the ground before their target, yet targets hit the ground before the bullets. It is no wonder people are angry. They are being shot with bullets, metal bullets the size of cats, with the thinnest rubber fur.

I still can’t fucking breathe.

Riots. Riots. Riots. A trans black woman started a riot. Stonewall. There is no queer liberation without black lives. Today, we celebrate Pride, but it is no parade. It is a riot. We riot for the black lives that matter, the ones then and the ones now. Riot. Riot. Riot. Complacency never made history.

I can’t breathe.

I write in neat Arial, I type in satisfying taps. But every keyboard click is a gunshot going off through the head of an innocent soul’s body. My hands shake, my shoulders shake. My throat hurts. Everything hurts.

I can’t breathe.

But they won’t kill me. This isn’t about me. It’s about the man who can’t breathe, and now he never will. It’s about the protestors who can’t breathe when cops throw tear gas and expect not peace, but complacency. This poem is falling apart and running in all different directions, but frankly, I don’t care. It’s appropriate, when the world is falling apart and Black folks are falling apart and families are falling apart and lives are-

I can’t breathe.

Lungs were meant to be full of air, but instead they are empty, or full of gas, or fear, or pain, or sorrow, or anger. Anger so bright, burning cars flicker and fail in comparison.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. The air is thick with toxins both physical and verbal. The words have been repeated through time, in so many contexts, wrapping our history books in cloaks of blood and broken pieces of record discs, replaying the same line over and over. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

The president rationalizes the loss of property as permission to take lives. You can rebuild things. You cannot rebuild people. But it is a sick echo of slave owners, equating life to property. Have we not learned anything in three hundred fucking years?

I can’t breathe.

I feel as though the world is dying inside me. I want to get out there, to be protesting, to be yelling myself hoarse with the names of people who must not be forgotten. I want to light something on fire, just to feel like I’m adding light to the world. I want to see a revolution. Hell, I want to be part of the revolution. I want to see people get mad enough that their anger rips the very fabric of society and weaves a new story into existence. I want to hold those responsible so close to the flame that the sweat on their brow from the heat cannot be differentiated from the sweat of knowing they are being forced to look at all the blood on their hands. I want them to see the passion burning in my eyes.

I can’t breathe.

I feel smothered. By smoke, by tears, by gas, by rubber, by leather, by skin, by metal.

I can’t breathe.