While Being

By: ​Darlene Anita Scott

WHILE BEING
since Amadou Diallo (9/2/1976 — 2/4/1999)

Do not walk home from work late at night through your neighborhood wearing your skin; 
your guard (because your ear and tongue have not learned to assimilate the language 
of this land). This land where you have learned that opportunity retracts its finger on triggers 
of suspicion; descriptions with fits like racks of sweaters deteriorating under fluorescent lights 
in department stores piping your mother’s wail, a melody encouraging you to more.
She is lean with grief, withering in yours, a son now slinking into a cause, case, memory, not the Opportunity that pulled at the seams of your village from which she flies to identify 
what is left of you and no longer her own.  You belong to placards, megaphones, and a number.

For your mothers’ sake, please be aware that you also should not purchase candy, soft drinks, 
or cigarettes; wear hoods in rain, pray in a sanctuary, swim in a pool, shop for or handle goods, fall asleep on a public bench; listen to music in your vehicle, request assistance when in crisis,
walk down public streets wearing earphones, drive; own a home and expect to decide 
who may/not enter, sleep on your grandmother’s couch; lay on your belly while restrained 
in handcuffs, stand on a median, find yourself homeless, suffering anxiety, a stroke, or melanin
without due caution as these have been known to cause death and in less severe cases 
media blackouts and acquittals of the harmers of your body, sometimes release of juvenile records and pressure pustules that also erupt into infectious rage; careless wielding of quotes jaggedly stitching your wounds packed and stuffed with newspaper where each organ is reduced to pink rubber flakes left after erasing the mistake they made of Being.

---

Darlene Anita Scott

is a poet and visual artist.  Recent photography has appeared in Auburn Avenue and Barren Magazine.  Recent poetry has appeared in Stonecoast Review, Madcap Review, and the jonestown report and is forthcoming in Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era, a collection of critical essays and poetry she co-edited with Drs. Tiffany Austin, Emily Rutter, and Sequoia Maner.  Scott lives in Richmond, Virginia.