Black Intersectionality, Policing, and Being Black at UChicago

all you can do is stare. the street lights reflect off the sleek asphalt and slick oil, a mother and her children idle nearby, a bike nearly runs over your foot, and all you can do is stare.

i cried in public at church once and my mother cried with me. singing something divine stomping her gospel feet under a devoted god spell fanning herself with a damp tissue. and jesus cried with me loved my water so much that he laid me back in my puddle and deemed the salt something holy.

i cried in public at a bookstore once and they offered me a story. the fiction shared my burden but it didn’t speak. i made it’s ink bleed a dripping noun left to dry a tear trapped in the spine a hard cover turned soggy.

i cried in public on the moon once surrounded by a galaxy as black as me surrounded by stars made from collided everythings. my tears fell up returning to my pupils, they fell up pixels of a rainbow, fell up remembering the last time they were truly weightless, something like an elderly dandelion, a droughted womb, a fertile afrofuture.

yet, for some reason when i cry in public at my pwi all you can do is stare. as if your paying me attention is paying reparations, as if my tears mean i am melting, mean i am made of the same shit as you, mean i am. and that’s a threat, and that’s a promise.