I try to sleep but
your names ring
in my head
like a resounding alarm.
Layleen!
Rayshard!
Dominique!
Riah!
Breonna!
Sandra!
Ahmed!
George…
……scribbles...blurs...too..many…
unknown...
sounds, sights, sorrows of
incessant fear, nearing
death.
There is no escape
nor a moment to
breathe,
every inch of our beings lived
in dreadful anticipation…
Who is next?
Am I next?
If not safe at rest nor in sleep, where then can we
be free?
I scroll,
I toss,
as my heart races,
legs tremble,
muscles spasm.
Endless images burn my mind,
implant more scenes in the file marked “trauma,”
that I have kept secret
since pap was pulled over,
questioned by the men in blue suits
as I sat with my coloring book in the backseat.
Dawn creeps in the periphery of my gaze,
still I remain stuck in this unbreakable loop;
shots, blood, screams,
death....
caused by the same men in blue suits
whose loud sirens ring almost as loud as
your names,
outside of the glass window too thin to shield my
black body.
6 am, my eyes are bloodshot
as I finally attempt the thing they call
sleep;
an act so foreign to those whose internal alarm of
agony
never ceases to ring.