A Poem for Breonna Taylor

    Breonna Taylor 
should be alive

though
she was born into an unkind world
an unkind history, white supremacy
and the War on Drugs

    now people pick apart 
her innocence (stop it)
after bullets killed her.
bullets from where? they are unclaimed,
from who? they are innocent bullets
from nowhere? 

no one
is to blame and yet
she is the only one
not still with us
in a room full of men
she she she she she she
alone fell. 

angels come!
close the mouths of the lions
so they can’t talk about her.
discussing the ins and outs
and who did what

she was home.
she had walked through the day
the innumerable dangers
and arrived in a safe place.
home.

they opened the door
to a safe place
and took away safety
and life
in a few short minutes 

she should be alive
and she is dead
and no one is held responsible.

this is not a discussion.
this is the soul leaving
the body
a body that had not yet done
all it was meant to do,
a life.

“if a slave should die while being corrected
the master will be acquitted of punishment
or accusation
but if the slave lift his or her hand—
thirty lashes” virginia code 1705, 
(paraphrased)

this is about the body.

we have said—
white people
this is our history
—do not look away,

if i do something to you,
i will go free. 
if you do something to me,
you will be punished 

and it lands
on women, Black women, 
working with their hands
in the same way every other person
washes dishes, tidies the living room,
pays the bills,
gets by, 

a cold wall of white men at the door

murder with
bullets from protected guns that
won’t be taken
hands that won’t be disarmed
it will happen again and

they will not help you.

everywhere chattering with all they know,
they try to rearrange these
facts, to explain that they know
they know better
but this is poison
it is poisoning us, 
stealing our humanity and 

her body.
her body was hands and arms and
soft skin, soft organs, a rib cage
the heart, keeping it all together.
eyes that saw the world and dreamed
a body that was a little girl
and then a woman for such
a short time.

the body is itself.
the body belongs to God and itself.
no one else.
the body is not for someone else’s profit
not for someone else’s contempt
or judgment — God made Breonna’s body
housed it with breath and love 
made it with melanin
made it with glory

angels come!
the body is home
the house is home
and where can Black women be safe? 

if she closed the door, put up her feet?
was she safe?

if you close your door, put up your feet?
are you safe?

what is this myth of the safe place?
of private property and the right to protect

    angels come now!
with fire
i call you, make them stop!
dissecting moments and angles and
their exhausting opinions,
every word they utter
like a whitewashed tomb
nothing inside but decay
their contempt for the body,
for the Black body, for women
for Black women, the home of the body
the delicate rib cage, like a house
for a jewel, 
their belief that they know better than God.

***

I first read about the Virginia 1705 code from a post by Viola Davis on Instagram.

***

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