Changed

I am tender, raw, torn open,
Pushed passed my numbness into a deep sense of urgency.
SOMETHING has to be done about this genocide happening in America.

When 3 decades of prison industrial complex incarcerations seemed challenged to end,
They threw off facades and took to old school lynching with new tools.
Now they call it "Standing Ground," and "Appropriate force for resisting arrest."
But the fruit is still so very strange,
Picked and left to spoil in the street
Instead of hanging on the trees.

I am different today, changed.
One too many brown baby's face etched in my mind
Who will never feel his or her mama's embrace again.
How can I be unchanged by it all?
How can I not see in their lost lives
Systemic design meant to eradicate me and mine from the planet?
It's the helplessness that hurts so.

Where does one begin to insist that their life matters?
I mean, shouldn't humans just already know
That all human life is precious?
And if that is not the case,
What is the state of their humanity who thinks otherwise?
I have very few answers now.
All I know in this moment is:

I am tender, raw, torn open,
Pushed passed my numbness into a deep since of urgency.
SOMETHING has to be done about this genocide happening in America.