what the dead know by heart by Donte Collins

what the dead know by heart
by: Donte Collins

lately, when asked how are you, i

respond with a name no longer living

Rekia, Jamar, Sandra

i am alive by luck at this point. i wonder

often: if the gun that will unmake me

is yet made, what white birth

will bury me, how many bullets, like a

flock of blue jays, will come carry my black

to its final bed, which photo will be used

to water down my blood. today i did

not die and there is no god or law to

thank. the bullet missed my head

and landed in another. today, i passed

a mirror and did not see a body, instead

a suggestion, a debate, a blank

post-it note there looking back. i

haven't enough room to both rage and

weep. i go to cry and each tear turns

to steam. I say I matter and a ghost

white hand appears over my mouth

I can't say that I love this poem, because the things that it speaks about are tragic, full of pain, and deeply vulnerable.  But it is those things that make this poem powerful, important, and a very real view of life as a black person here in America, and likely around the world.

I've been struggling with being white this month, seeing all the pain, anguish, and simple desire to just be seen as a person that many of these poems written by black authors and poets have expressed.  And there are so many, many more that I didn't even include this month.  But I've been struggling with how to elevate the voices of black people without being patronizing--without stealing something from them, and without being culturally and ethnically insensitive.  After hundreds of years of exploitation, dehumanization, and disrespect of black people and other people of color by my white ancestors, I feel horribly inadequate and by myself incapable of doing anything that could even begin to heal the wounds that this poem states so perfectly, so powerfully, and so painfully.

Marginalized people have been made to feel "less than," unworthy, and unseen.  And we've been doing this for so long that we've created scars and wounds that go deeper than anything physical ever could.  And while black people, people of color, and the LGBTQA+ communities are finally starting to take back their voices and believe that their own lives actually matter, we continue to see white violence against them.  The stories of the past are still here with us; and just when we think things are finally starting to get better, something else comes along and reminds us that, no.  The hatred and the bigotry, the fear and the desire to destroy are still here--still present and still (horribly!) celebrated today.

It would be nice if we could point to a scapegoat and say that it's not us; it's other countries that want to see America fall apart, or its terrorists who are trying to destroy the harmony we're building in order to foment chaos for their own ends.  Or else it's criminal elements throwing a wrench into things in order to distract us from their criminal enterprises.  And sure, there may be some of that, but the vast majority of the violence is being done by...just...people.  White people who are told all their lives that people of color are coming to take over their everything.  White people who are told that things would have been fine if the government hadn't stepped in.  White people who are told that the black people enslaved their own people; (so, it's not all on us!)  White people who are told that black people aren't as smart, or capable as them.  There are so many hateful, false, and bigoted words out there that they just start to become the norm and stop being seen for the weapons they truly are.

Guns aren't the only things that are killing black people and other marginalized communities.  When we treat people as though they're no longer human, they start seeing themselves like this:

                                   ...i passed

a mirror and did not see a body, instead

a suggestion, a debate, a blank

That is, by far, probably one of my favorite lines of this poem, because that end-line break there, even though it goes on in the next stanza ("post-it note there looking back...") makes me feel that emptiness that the speaker sees themselves as--that "blank".  I feel that sense of being nobody--unseen and unsee-able, my life without a future and so bereft of any meaningful present.  And that's the line that breaks me.

Because if that is the result of hundreds of years of repression and segregation and dehumanization--how do we change that?  How do we make it better?  Because we have to make it better.  No one should be made to feel like they don't matter.

And let me just say one thing about that.  There are people out there who don't understand why it's so important to say "Black Lives Matter."  They say in their naive worldview that all lives matter.  And no one is denying that peoples' lives matter, but they fail to see and to grasp the fact that for hundreds of years, we as a society have said specifically that there are some lives that matter less than others--specifically black lives.  So when we are out there saying Black Lives Matter, we are saying that for far too long we've pretended otherwise--that our society as a whole has believed otherwise (whatever our personal beliefs,) and that this can't be allowed to continue.  Not now.  Not tomorrow.  Not ever.

And that is why those last lines are so distressing to me:

... I say I matter and a ghost

white hand appears over my mouth

 Because I don't want to be the white hand covering the mouth of these words.  I don't want to be that white woman who is seen as an impediment to black people having their own power in the world.  But I do want to be there to remove those white hands that are seeking to stifle beautiful, strong, powerful, and meaningful black voices.  I want to be a bridge between this present world, and the world which Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed about, and about which so many black people today are still hoping to see.  And while I will continue to share my own thoughts about black poets and their poetry, and continue to advocate for diverse voices in all aspects of American culture, I'm good with letting them speak for themselves, too--to discount my voice for once in favor of their own.  Because people like me have been doing that to them for a long, long time, and there are scales to be balanced before the black people of this world can feel safe, feel seen, feel heard, and feel like they are valued as people again.

And I guess that's how I can start to heal those wounds--by inflicting a few of them on myself in the hope that trust can be regained and restored between the white people and the black people of this world.  But seeing this--reading this?  I'd rather by far do that, than to allow these words, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs to continue as they have.  We need to rebuild trust between one another, and it starts by acknowledging these words, these names (Rekia, Jamar, Sandra...) these lives.