A Beginner’s Guide to Being Black in America

Richard Scott

1.

Keep your hood down, so your candy and iced tea aren’t weaponized. Give them no reason to see you as more of a threat than what they already believe you to be.

2.

Don’t play with a toy gun in public. Even though six years later your counterparts freely kill with real ones. Leave your toy gun at home. You will become the target even if they know it’s a toy

3.

Don’t look suspicious while driving. Even if you didn’t perform that robbery,you did. Don’t you dare reach for your license. A wallet looks too much like a gun in your hands. Your word means nothing. your skin tells the whole story.

4.

Never jog outside. Your strides can be your demise. No, of course you didn’t do anything wrong but your complexion has never been seen as right. Even if you’ve never, burglarized you’re a burglar. Your melanin is suspicious enough.

5.

Never defend yourself in your own home. I know it sounds crazy but your self-defense is illegal and is reason enough to fire 32 rounds in your home. Even if you were preparing to work the frontlines of a pandemic; your skin is still a disease.

6.

Keep your hands at ten and two and follow the speed limit. A traffic stop can become your execution. Yes, the plague has spread. All skin folk ain’t kinfolk. Keep your expectations low because your own brothers don’t want to support your highs.

7.

All you can really do is pray to your Higher Power. Our lives are more so in their hands than ours.

I grieve for you Hayden

Burnside

Today was a tough day they officially no longer would come over And my room feels so quiet, echoing my intrusive thoughts There are so many holes where things used to be holes that pierce my heart to peer through Because, for some reason, I don’t want to relive better days And even when I’m not looking at them Everything in my room reminds me Reminds me of their grey Nike sweatshirt the card I bought them for Christmas the memories washing down my eyes like rain through a gutter

Drip, drip, shatter.

Being in my room feels very weird. Because for as long as I can remember, they’ve never not been there. They’ve never not been there for me. but now they’re gone, gone for good

We crafted this room together

Created the love and destroyed it like broken plates And I keep thinking about the first night you crashed into my life how you slept on the soggy mattress which was more Springs than bed

Now my room is filled with more furniture, but yet it feels so empty

And I feel a whole new level of aloneness

A level so deep that I’m begging to get out

But Hey, I usually like to stay alone except for this, loneliness is different

I’m grieving this chapter of My Life that no longer exists.

I’m grieving for someone who is very much alive but yet I’m not grieving for myself

I grieve for them.