One dry tear. . .
Jacob Blake
I don’t care what he says, if he is Black, he is crying.
I don’t care how much money he makes or lacks in his pocket
he is crying.
I don’t even care what religion or set he is claiming, he is crying.
Please do not assume that he is a weakling or a punk,
or a fool,
because he is crying.
You probably did not even notice the tears.
Where is the visual pain,
the never-ending knot in the pit of the stomach,
the crossed eyes,
and the constant cowering to life’s circumstances?
If you look with your eyes you will not see
all of life’s weight accumulating from the wait
of having melanin matter.
one dry tear that flees the corner of the eye
from the birth of our soul
till a death destiny.
One collection of emotion, one total release is all that we wish we could afford.
And as this tear leaves the tired and narrowed eyes
it descends
down a broken jaw
a masked smile,
a mouth that swallows hard,
a heart that chronically aches,
a stomach that hungers to fix our family’s ills,
to the loins of misguided frustration,
to legs that never outrun america’s hunting hatred of us,
to feet that have never rested in a settled space
And as this tear sojourns,
it accumulates tragedies
after disappointments
after hardships
after letdowns
after love loss.
This is the tear that you will never see.
This is that one dry tear that america created the moment her sinous forefathers brought us over
here.
This is the tear that kills spirits, drowns hopes, compromises compassion,
and quietly quickens the death of us
true enough,
there are no tears like those of a black mother,
who has had to cry out as another son and another daughter
are taken from her
but you never see that one dry tear of a black brotha
that has been beaten, beaten and beaten again by systemic sicknesses
Once dry tear that rains when our complexion dictates our direction
regardless of our authored attempts;
when our God Blessed Best is never good enough
because of the colored shades that many see as a painted target
on our backs…
even when we just walk away.
That tear comes when our natural state is sadness, anger and rage,
illing our mental,
erasing our spiritual and
wrongly influencing our physical.
It comes because since 1619 we have not been able to stop it
protect our women from it
seen our children raised with it
and been denied dignity because of it
we have not stopped it.
One dry tear.
One lonesome, unceremoniously, dry tear.
Every time we try to sniffle the tear up,
another incident, another murder, another assassination of another one of
us, leaves its tracks on an already worn soul.
it’s the murder of
Sandra Bland,
Trayvon Martin,
Freddie Gray
Philando Castile,
Laquan McDonald,
Breonna Taylor,
Tony McDade,
Aura Rosser,
George Floyd,
And so many others…
And now the shooting of another, Jacob Blake.
One dry tear.
I can’t cry anymore.
By: Rev. Damon Smith