My
brother was killed when hashtags were pound signs,
so
there was no online outrage,
none
offline either…
He just got shot.
A black finger pulled the trigger
and nobody did anything “constructive”
but put his face on a goddamn t-shirt
that I’ve been wearing (once a week)
for the last 18 years.
You see…I’ve
known that Black lives matter for some time now.
I
didn’t expect a march or anything…
I got it.
He
was nothing special –
no
innocent juvenile face to splatter across the news,
Al
Sharpton would never speak on his behalf.
In fact, we were halves –
different moms,
same fatal father though,
junkie blood coursing
through our veins making us both sick.
At
some point he got a girl pregnant
and
didn’t marry her,
at
another he moved dope to support the baby,
no
surprise that no one batted an eye when they saw
Twenty-four…Black…Male…Homicide…
Guess a bullet was the only cure for his social disease.
Guess
that’s why no one panicked.
Guess
that’s why I can’t get with this new movement.
I
panicked 18 years ago,
When
the phone rang during the “bad-news” hours
and
I had to take a trip uptown
to
see roses haphazardly thrown on the pavement where his body fell,
and
my DNA daddy hung his head
and
acted as if he ever gave more of a damn about either of us
than
he did his drugs and women.
I
panicked cause I knew no one thought about my niece enough
to
work to change the direction of yet another fatherless girl.
When
I realized the rest of her life
would
be littered with lies
about
a man she was too young to know,
but
would always wonder about.
And how can any of us
girls ever have
a fighting chance to
change our stars
unless we know and accept
the truth about our daddies.
I
panicked when I accepted the truth about mine…
When
I realized the best and worst of him war in me,
And
that I walk a tightrope between revolutionary and reject
when
I stand in front of children and tell them
to
forgive their parents everyday
because
they did the best with what they had.
When I insist they
focus on the future
because that’s all
they can really own,
and all they can ask
me is how much I money I make.
Keep
your hashtag heroes
and
other online bullshit.
I haven’t been able to breath for 18
years.
My hands have been up in surrender for
34.
And unless you’re prepared to live
your protest,
your hashtag might as well be another
goddamn t-shirt
with a nondescript face,
sunrise and sunset dates too close
together,
passed out to the family in memory
of the lives we put on the back burner for 140
characters of self-righteousness
