Black Lives Matter

Tonight, I'm amplifying Rochelle David. Their poetry is uplifting, evocative, deep, inspiring, and more. 

I'm also amplifying the many voices that are calling for justice for Breonna Taylor. Last night, I had a nightmare where a horrible, brutal, people-eating monster that looked like an angler fish was actively hunting all of us. The worst part of the nightmare was the "lure" of the monster was a cat - a cat that looked real, felt real, purred, cuddled, and was generally adorable - and it wasn't until you snatched it up for loves and cuddles that the monster would close its gnarled jaws around your body and it would be too late. 

I felt there was a message for me in the nightmare. The angler fish is racism. The cat is all the fluffy, happy things in my life that attempt to draw my attention away from the fight for equity that Black, Indigenous, People of Color, never get to look away from. The message is, if I look away from the monster, if I snatch up the cat to cuddle with all the comfortable and wonderful things in my life, I'll become the monster too- swallowed whole. 

Once I woke up, shook off the vestiges of sleep, I stepped into the shower and thoughts of Breonna entered my mind and those thoughts spun into this poem: