In memory of Breonna Taylor

She had the chance you know.
Countless chances, actually,
To gift her child what she had promised,
Whispering about which would be hers so very soon,
Folded neatly within borders,
Topped with a ribbon bursting to be untied.

This gift would not be a thing, really.
Not something to be held, per se,
But rather a boundless blank canvas
On which her child could etch a future.

A place where arms embrace, not hesitate,
Where ears are not deafened by sirens of savages,
As to hear that cries of mothers are calls for civility,
Where eyes are not gilded into blindness,
Unable to see.
That justice should be the child of love and logic,
And where souls are not scalded leaving scars too deep,
To recognize
That chains should be pearls of prosperity,
Not marks of ancestry.

But Mother America has left her child to the mercy of the wind,
Giving guns to untrained philosophers,
Their weapons nothing more than concealed conjecture,
With thought experiments recorded in blood.

And so she stands,
With empty hands,
Waiting on Mother’s word.