When I tell my mom that I fear for the lives of the people who I hold dear to me , she asks why 

when I tell her that the colour of their skin , the darker it is , a brighter red seems to be stamped with a target on their backs , she laughs and she tells me that there's nothing I have to worry about when I ask my mom why the way black lives slip out of our hands doesn't strike her down with fear , she has no answer to feed me this time I tell her , mother , a mother always deserves to see her child live her out I tell her what do you do when that right is ripped away from you like the life of a young black boy , barely the age of noon what do you do when a father is stolen from his children what do you do with the colours red white and blue fade into black like a funeral , like the funerals that we don't get to see swept under the rug like it doesn't pile uplike the blood doesn't stain the hardwood floors and the hands they bled on what do you say when gunshots have turned into death tolls when there are too many names to put on one tshirt when white men in uniforms just don't mean the same thing anymore , I wish that I could live in her world  the world she was given with no corruption and no pain Because it's so easy to "not see color" when it's being erased i was there when it happened sirens sang comforting lullabies to the grieving helicopters tried to fan the fever but fanned the fires no drying tears from tear gas it's different when it's this close to home it means something else when it could've been your brother your father , the girl you went to school with it's different when you can hear the screaming if you just open the front door "enough is enough" we scream it from raw lungs , hearts sore , feelings numbwe've seen this all before we all bleed the same blood but there's more stains in white skin than we'll ever get to know ripping through dreams like bullets through flesh , neighbors look through door mesh , wondering if this is all just God's test