It’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.

—Renée Nicole Good, mother, poet. Murdered 1/9/2026.

Narrow down and down, to the reflection
in a gas station puddle, all iridescent oil
and cloud blur, narrower still. The space
of one raindrop on a dry sidewalk.
On your nose. In your eye.
For a long time, too long, so many of us
didn’t know what to do. Yesterday,
I watched a video of a man drawing
a line in sand over and over and over
as another man crossed it, over and over.
Dear Reader, I grew up with these people.
I loved them and now I see the whole
of their lives as a lie they told or believed,
and it doesn’t, it hasn’t helped me
to have a mind that sees patterns
like trajectories. My arm is tired from
flailing, from reaching like the over-eager
child in a classroom, my whole body
rising out of the hard plastic seat, my mouth
too well-behaved to shout out what I know,
what I’ve seen coming, for years, what I can’t
unsee. In the end, I want to be a body
of comfort, a person another person
or a child might run to, safe enough
for someone to stand behind me,
my own voice clear enough,
loud enough.