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.