#human righta

Their tiny brown bodies so fragile

that even a hand placed too low

or too high

would fail to support their necks

and they would break.

They grew as strong and as American as the trunks of apple trees

but still I am afraid

of the intentional placement of knees

on brown and black necks

not fragile but weakened

by these chains that don’t look heavy until you’ve worn them a hundred years.

I watched my babies as they slept

my heart stopped each time their chests took a millisecond too long to rise

but they always did rise, and then I too could breathe again.

To suffocate must feel

like you are drowning slowly

like the air is right there if you could just reach the surface

if only the blurry hands and voices begging for your breath were strong enough to break through and save you.

Instead only the black pavement held you like a mother’s chest until there was no more sky.

And the strange slow violence of your murder played again and again like nursery rhymes

like prayer

reminding us