But what can you do?
I live two lives, at least. Maybe more.
One where I have to wake up, get focused,
get dressed, prep for the day, walk out the door,
stand in front of teenagers absorbed with gossip:
who’s still together and who’s breaking up,
and did you hear what she said in the bathroom?
Pop culture, college apps, prom dress, basketball.
Meanwhile, in offices down the fluorescent hall,
the admins run a ship as tight as ever. Funds raised,
parents met with, quarter grades submitted. Like
nothing is amiss. Apply for this! Great news! As if
we aren’t oblivious frogs in a quickly warming pot.
But what can you do? Meanwhile ICE, in my other life,
murders in cold blood and the vile mouths talking
endlessly call it self-defense. Fucking bitch.
The refrain of every small angry man ever spurned.
She was killed for existing and trying to leave
the scene. Women know the score. We have felt this all
before. But now she’s white. Now, she’s us. And we
are afraid. Blood on the ground and all of our hands.
I watch videos and am terrified. I wonder what it will take
to convince ourselves to fight. I wonder when, not if,
the war will begin, and how I can even be thinking about
anything else. I wonder in my dark moments what I did
to deserve this fate: being born in a place built entirely
on the bloody back of hate. But what can you do?
I have to go to work. I have to teach these words.
Pretend like it’s not all crashing down around us.
I have to eat and sleep and dream into believing
that we have what it takes to save ourselves
from the mess we’ve made. I have to write a poem
to make a container for despair. I have to show up.
Have to rage. Until the sun swallows the earth.
Until they put me in the dirt.
