Do you see me? A poem.

Do you see me?

Do you see my beautiful brown eyes as I stare in wonder at what the earth has for me.

My mama says I have the most beautiful brown eyes she’s ever seen.

She’s been waiting a long time for me.

I’m her lucky number 1. Number 2. Number 3.

I’m her baby.

Do you see me putting up my hand in class? I know the answer! It’s a giraffe!

But you skip over me and point at Michael Staff,

Did you see me on the playground today?

I was telling Tessa that she’d be okay,

I’ll fight the bullies for her any day,

I saw you looking down at me like I’d done something wrong,

I don’t trouble trouble, so trouble won’t trouble me,

Tessa thinks that’s a good philosophy.

Do you see me?

What do you see when you look at my ID?

Do you see my beautiful brown eyes that only my mama can see?

Why are you interrogating me?

Do you hear me when I say I’m going to build something one day?

Build a house, build a bridge, build a better world for all these kids,

You scoff and stare at my ID,

“Go on home, this time y’all got lucky”,

“But we just came from the library”,

“Don’t talk back to me, unless you wanna see the inside of a penitentiary”,

Every inch of my bones, now sits in anxiety.

Do you see me?

Do you see my cap and gown?

I gave mama so much hell but nope, not today, she’s not wearing that frown,

She’s telling all her friends I made it to Brown,

There’s gonna be a big party for us right here in town.

But the gig got shutdown,

Police all around,

We put our hands up and our knees on the ground,

When I tried to pull out my ID,

The officer shot me,

“Shit”, he says,

He didn’t see me,

But it’s too late you see.

That officer remembers me,

I’m the kid he stopped,

At the park with Tessa,

And with my friends after the library,

He will have to tell my mama that she’ll never get to see, the beautiful brown eyes that she gave to me.

Mama screams, “why did they have to kill my son?”

“He was my baby, my first, my last, my only one”,

“He had so much potential you see”,

“He lit up everything in me”,

“He had dreams bigger than the sea”,

“Now what he could’ve been, has been taken away from me”,

“Tell me”, she cries, “who will save our sons and daughters?”

Everything in mama’s world gets blurry,

Depression is now her frenemy,

She’s tired of fighting,

Her heart is too heavy,

The doctor says she needs to take it easy,

But she wants to be free,

And the only way out, is to lay down, next to me.

For Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Elijah McClain, Sandra Bland, Aiyana Jones, Dominique Fells, Riah Milton, Michael Brown, John Crawford, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Darius Simmons, Malcolm Ferguson, Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Kimani Gray, Kendrec McDade, Timothy Russell, Ervin Jefferson, Patrick Dorismond, Ousamane Zongo, Timothy Stansbury Jr, Orlando Barlow, Aaron Campbell, Victor Steen, Steven Eugene Washington, Alonzo Ashley, Wendell Allen, James Brissette, Ronald Madison, Travares McGill, Ramarley Graham, and countless, nameless other Black and Trans men and women.

We will not stop fighting.

Rest in peace beautiful Black souls.