Three Quarters Black

Home 

Where love is shared. 

Where family is built.

Where happiness is put together to make more.

Where you should feel safe.

I sleep, eat, breathe home. 

Home 

My dad walks through the door

Four o’clock.

Snack, homework time till four-thirty.

Dinner Prep

Five o’clock CNN... 

Home.

What are we seeing on the news?

My sisters and I try to understand why three quarters of us are being oppressed. 

Another one of us shot dead. 

Police officer.

Not convicted.

My parents teaching us things that white kids don’t have to be taught.

My sisters and I do.

Home. 

This country is supposed to be our home.

How can it be that when we are afraid that a cop may pull over our father and

BOOM

 kill him on his way home from work.

Home

Thoughts racing through our minds

Mom can’t work because of her back.

How can we survive without my father? 

No income.

No extra love that three quarters of us need.

Nothing.

Is this really home? 

Scared to be out walking alone 

With our hair done in cornrows 

Or out in an afro? 

Home 

Our parents shaking their heads as we see the next headline:

NOT CONVICTED

We are angry and hurt as this is the seventh time we have seen this headline this year alone

When is this going to end?

My sisters and I ask 

Why aren’t people doing something about it? 

We cry.

Home 

Is this really our home, where we fear for three quarters of us?