I Listen To The Birds, The Scents Waft Through My Window

Melodic chirping pours through my shut windows.

I open one eye, squinting into the light.

My body rests peacefully, then instinctively sits up, tense.

The world, I remember, is in shambles.

I think of the people I know, waking up to stinging eyes.

The tear gas washed off but the feeling sinking in.

The cities burning.

The skeletons of yesterday lining the streets.

Shaking and sitting, I decide to face the fogged oxygen of the outside world.

Shuffling my feet down the street, I realize it's afternoon.

Late afternoon.

I realize this as I take in the smell of a backyard barbecue.

A family sits on their porch, surrounding a grill filled with fresh vegetables and meats.

I stand there and stare, unaware of the uncomfortable feeling I would imbed in their souls.

Voyeuristically, vacantly, curiously watching.

The smell wafts through my nasal passages and out again. In, and out.

Thoughts scramble in my brain of the fear that lines the air.

The horror instilled in the city just hours before.

The privilege of parting.

Parting with your loved ones, knowing you will live.

The privilege of falling forward, knowing you will be caught.

A feeling of unrest you can and will express.

Without the cost of a life.

Fleeing to your safe, warm bed.

Knowing where that is and that it will stay.

Expecting the worst, even though you know the worst for you is the least.

Where will they go?

To feel normal.

To feel loved.

To feel peace.

How can you use your voice?

To yell at your loved ones over barbecued, organic vegetables?

Or to create a new narrative?

Where any one person can feel normal.

Normal enough to love.

To feel.

To sit on their porch with their family and know they are safe.

I wonder if this family is aware.

I wonder if this family feels the weight of the world like I do.

I wonder, how to be blissfully unaware like them.

I wonder.

This poem expresses an experience I had the other night. I saw a family, simply just existing in their bubble on their front porch.

While two hours beforehand the entire city had started going up in flames.

Lives were being compromised.

I felt confused.

I felt shame to be a part of their city. Their race.

I wanted so badly to understand why they could engage in normalcy while I couldn't sleep.

While millions of people world wide were putting themselves on the front lines for those who don't have that privilege.

How can you ignore so blatantly the world around you?

Do they not feel the heavy air around them? Of the lives lost and the businesses built on love and ancestry that have been demolished?

We, as white people knowing we have the privileges that people of color do not, can not act like our normal lives are appropriate to resume right now.

We must fight.

We must put ourselves in front.

We cannot idly stand by and barbecue.

There is chaos and there is hate.

Mostly coming from us.

A union must be formed and that starts with us.

It starts with the fall of white supremacy.

It starts with you, us, on the front lines.

I feel the weight and you should too.

What is normal?

It doesn't exist.

We shouldn't perpetuate a normal that doesn't exist.

We have the power to change the dynamic.

Use it.

Prove it.

Protect them.

Protect each other.

Step outside of yourself and listen.

Stop fucking talking and listen.

Just stop fucking talking.

Just listen.

To those who deserve to be speaking.