Sometimes I wake up without the ability to breathe
The deadliest lively woman you know
Wrap myself into promises that tomorrow will be better
But what if tomorrow never comes?
I live in a world that is on fire
So sometimes I wake up gasping for air
screaming that I can’t breathe
Without being heard
A world that is on fire
That is torched with spirits of the fallen dead
Where the witch hunter kills its prey with his knee on his neck
And no mercy
Where little Black boys don’t grow past 17
And Black girls carrying the world on their shoulder without seeing a better tomorrow
This world is where Black bodies come to die
And are lost but never found
A playground for the wicked
And here we are
Trying to learning how to breathe again
When the smoke is choking us
And then they ask us why we cannot breathe?
And we say because a police officer put his knee on the neck of 328 million Black people
because a police officer came into our home, murdered us, and only got charged with the shots that missed
a police officer pulled us over, arrested us, and left us for dead in our jail cell
taped our eyelids open for all to see the hopelessness in our eyes
And we say we are tired
Of saying her name
Of saying we cannot breathe
Of you not giving a fuck
We say we are tired of the exploitation of Black Death
of the inability to grieve
The Fatigue is unbearable
So we conjure up all that we know to be ours and march
We march until there’s nowhere else to go
Dragging the shadows of a civil rights movement that never ended
Just slightly forgotten
When you live in a world that is on fire
You learn how it feels to burn
And how to swallow smoke
So that you may have the ability to breathe
Surviving at a time like this is not for the weak
But even the strong are getting weary
I live in the world without promised tomorrows
And a target on my back
Where Black people die young
So we live everyday without the promise of tomorrow
Lend our bodies for my fallen niggas to borrow
Because everyday is a testament to our survival
In a world that is burning
With the genocide of Black people
Who cannot breathe.
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