12:53 a.m

My mental foundation cracked,

the building fell, and finally the news hit me.....

like a ton of bricks.

I sit with waterfalls dripping from my eyes out of fear that some time this year my 11 year old brother might be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

What is the law? Just a dead lifted system that benches my people in graves and prisons.

What is justice? We can't even get a court date because of our core trait: African American. That is what we are supposedly called but my eyes see illegal immigrant as in illegally taken from our motherland and placed in a space where we are viewed as less than human.

Never has a shiver ran so far up my spine as to render me paralyzed.

I can't dream Dr. King's message of being judged by the content of my character with the nightmare of guns and gavels staring me straight in the eyes.

I am not even surprised. Just seeking to find how to escape here.

It is unacceptable to feel, as my brother and sister sleep, that their risk of getting a blind date with Smith and Wesson is so high despite the school lessons.

Unavoidable. Too present but the opposite of a gift. I need a legend to indicate where character exists on this map of America, that place they called economic heaven.

I quit pretending that things were going to get better soon. I just wish that the clouds of grey would clear and we could see sky blue the image described by Langston Hughes,

how beautiful we are, making haters ashamed because all I see right now is young black people prematurely fading away.