Hope Hangs

This is poem follows my short story Arrested by the Black Night

I walked behind my superiors – I mean my friends.

I mean I always felt a step behind them;

Behind this melanin, this brittle cracked black skin;

this ebony that lags behind the epitome of perfection.

White college students with lives of confidence and ease,

privileged and offered the first of all possibilities.

Reality ate at me as did the Dogwood leaves.

The sap glued to my wool coat as we ran through trees.

I hated my infatuation of the crisp bright souls

hidden as deep as Tubman’s Underground Railroad.

We were closer to the grounds of Memorial Hall:

The Old Hillsborough High past the National Guard.

Behind Elderberry’s, I savored my last whiff of dark roast

and pretended the local brew gulped warmly down my throat.

Ruminating on possible cop chases, my amygdala grew;

Every leaf crinkle mimicking a popped balloon.

The minority report will read I’ve already been charged

with being black at night which is against the law.

I may have my picked my neighbor’s lock in 1997,

but we were children and didn’t know any better.

But now? Breaking and entering to see total darkness?

The red stoplight directed me to take a sharp exit.

From this vantage point, my anxiety arrests me.

From this vantage point, my humanity is extinct.

From this vantage point, my hope hangs from a noose.

From this vantage point, I cannot even follow suit.

Written by Devans Eli. Copyright 2023 by Devans Eli. All rights reserved.