Living Punishable By Death

Read more from Critical Perspectives in Criminal Justice.

Iyana Trotman is a freshman at Wake Forest University. She was a champion policy debater for North Star Academy in Newark, NJ, where she focused on critical theory and antiblackness, and currently debates for Wake Forest.

Content Warning: This poem includes descriptions of violence and racial slurs. 

today i asked myself, 

“have i been saying their names loud enough?”

like maybe if i shouted louder

my air loss would grant life to their bodies. 

like maybe if i was just loud

i could voice their thoughts.

feel their pain.

if any.

today i asked myself, 

“would their bodies float to the rim of the water?

 would they name their tormentors?

would they ask for justice?”

could they hear me shouting?

inhale;

exhale;

breathe.

or do i try my hardest to stop breathing?

darkness is more than 

chocolate skin pressed against a bland background, but,

you couldn’t tell because 

whiteness captures it like quicksand.

black is a color, a code, a transcript;

la negra, el negro, nigger;

skin, nose, mouth, lips.

was it ever captured, did it ever belong to us?

year 401 and still shouting, 

i think we’re mute.

but,

the chanting grew faint, the rallies still,

and we believed in our hearts that ‘i can’t breathe’ wasn’t a slogan 

because our breathing slowed,

and this time, there were too many names to say.

we put our hands up and never said don’t shoot but 

closed our eyes.

because death was here already.

the truth is,

all our lives we’ve been

running like Ahmaud,

going to the store like Trayvon,

sleeping like Aiyonna,

getting married like Breonna.

saying their names.

screaming them.

crying, watching, because that too was us 

on that run, at that traffic stop, at the papi store, in the house just—

 not yet.

so yeah.

today i asked myself, 

“have i been saying their names loud enough?”

and i haven’t.

because in every action i take there's a spirit 

of a black body reminding me 

that being black means being punished and

being black and alive is punishable by death.

i didn’t forget, it’s impossible to.

being louder won’t bring them back, but i still remember

dana martin’s laughter,

eric garner’s family,

philando castile's advocacy,

bailey reeves’ fun aura,

and their names echo there too,

because death wasn’t all it was with niggas.