This piece is from the INDY’s Portrait of Pride series. You can read the rest of the pieces here.
My brothers have always called me to ask about life.
Ask,
How to unlock their lockers in middle school
Wonder,
If math ever gets any easier
And
Why are all their classmates in coffins?
For the first time
I realized I underestimated the job of myself as the oldest.
Forgot about this coming of age ritual in our city.
I want to tell them that it will stop,
but half the boys I had history with in high school ain’t with us no more.
We
been ducking hot metal, trigger fingers and paddy wagons since summers off Liberty & Alston
In the city’s efforts to leave no kids behind
they put up millions to keep them in cages
I know my baby brother is really askin’
when he can stop grieving
When he can start grieving
He askin’
How he know he ain’t got next
He ask me
“Why they keep killin’ kids?”
and I got no answer, cause I got the same question.
So, I write these soliloquies for the kids dressed in blue and red.
Who
rep flags cause that’s the only way they know family.
Who
run to Glocks for safety cause they own city steady pullin’ guns on ‘em.
Their childhood playgrounds reminiscent of a gun range,
them magazines all the teddy bear and nightlight they eva known.
Your Sweet Sixteen might send you to the other side,
you and yo’ homies bars know how to throw the biggest memorial y’all eva seen.
This my city’s coming of age ritual.
I know boys havin’ babies, just to leave a piece of themselves behind.
They got more security in death,
than they do this life.
Got plenty faith they’ll see a coffin,
but have never dreamed up an altar,
or an offer
on a life worth living.
My city, got more money
for bars and bullets
than dreams and diplomas.
They think they saving us,
But how you saving the generation you insist on caging?
The kids can’t read,
Mamas ain’t got enough money to make sure the babies can eat.
We got more liquor stores than libraries.
But whitewashed policies lie and say BullCity is the place to be.
They tryna turn the East and the SouthSide to gentrification’s mistress
And to ease the mess
Income reqs on the housing is “mixed”
But
We not tryna rent the block that belongs to us
It seem folk only wanna see us get it back in blood.
How many babies we gone have to bury?
And how much blood gone have to stain the streets for MedCity to make a miracle out the mess it’s bore?
I’m so tired of the “Black Excellence” residing on the plantations,
White morals whipping Black leaders into captivity.
They put a highway through our Mecca to make it easier for folk to get to massa.
They tryna coerce us grateful.
I know this story.
In the end,
We never win.
When they ask,
“Who’s gonna save the babies?”
I remind them that,
We have always been our own saviors.
Grandmamas prayers the best medicine,
community, the safest haven.
We built schoolhouses from scraps of paper and graduate this life with the highest honors,
rebuilt the homes they snatched our fathers from,
made delicacy out of desecration,
paved our own Wall Street when they said we weren’t worthy of theirs.
We are the only people in this world
who hold the fires used to burn us down, to light up our skies.
When they ask,
”Who is going to save the babies?”
We must turn on the God in ourselves to run the kingdom of our birthright
Cause we have always been
all we got.
Comment on this story at [email protected].