1. I don’t know how to reach you, since when you speak in person or through social media, you are aware of current events.
2. I see you in every man who goes to work and comes home to watch sports until you’re asked a direct question, “What do you think about the systematic incarceration of black and brown people who are locked up disproportionately to white people despite committing crimes at similar rates?”
3. My granddad, father, uncle, cousins, and myself have been placed in handcuffs, I want to tell you, while I write my days away.
4. The more I write, the more I discover our narrative was meant to be forgotten.
5. “Because my father didn’t bond with his dad,” my conscious screams, “it’s okay to repeat family history.”
6. “Nor does my family share memories,” I write in my journal reflecting over the silence that filled my granddad’s room when asked about his childhood.
7.
8. There was a loose paper left by my great-grandma, my granddad’s mom. It held names and places of people who were kin to me but strangers at the same time.
9. You are like WiFi.
10. When I want to connect, you are not in service for black lives. 11. (A survival tactic, I’m sure).
12. I need to learn how we can thrive without you.
13. And still be open to you when you’re ready.
14. As if you’re a branch from my family tree.
Rashaun J. Allen is a writer, entrepreneur, poet, professor, and a Fulbright recipient. A past Vermont Studio Center and Arts Letters & Numbers resident whose two poetry chapbooks: A Walk Through Brooklyn and In The Moment became Amazon Kindle Best Sellers. He has been nominated for Sundress Publication’s 2018 Best of the Net Anthology in Creative Non-Fiction and was a 2017 Steinberg Essay Contest Finalist in Fourth Genre. You can visit his website rashaunjallen.com for more of his work.
