Day 8: Why I hold vigil every month witnessing Black lives lost to police violence and proclaiming that Black Lives Matter

So, I am really tired tonight in a soul-tired kind of way.  I have had a barely medicated migraine most of the day, and my heart and my soul is just tired.  The downside of writing a poem every day is that you don't have a lot of time to fix/think/work on things before you gotta move on.  This is one I would like to fix/think/work on, and probably will...but I need to turn out the light.  

I dislike churning out poems about "big issues" like this quickly, because it feels more likely that I'll get it wrong.  I kept getting anxious as I was writing it, thinking "you're going to say it wrong" and "that's not right!" and "you're going to mess it up and *insert catastrophic thought here*".

But I recently re-listened to Lauren Zuniga's poem - "Confessions of an Uneducated Queer," in which she says:

"I was afraid to write this because I didn't want to fuck it up.
Writing poems about things you don't really know a lot about can be very problematic
but not writing poems about things you're afraid to fuck up can also be very problematic.
The world is problematic -- please.  Fuck it up."

This is me - being willing to fuck it up in this big, problematic world.  

Why I hold vigil every month witnessing Black lives lost to police violence and proclaiming that Black Lives Matter

Because I am white.

Because I have work to do.

Because I do not always know how to do it.

Because people mostly honk, and wave, and drive.

Because I waved at a white woman and she flipped me off.

Because, even here, we have work to do.

Because it is living my faith.

Because it is full-bodied prayer.  

Because I do not know all of their names.

Because we do not have signs with all of their names.

Because we do not have enough people to hold signs with all of their names.

Because there are always more names.

Because I do not know all of their stories.

Because there are always more stories.

Because there are hearts behind the names and stories.

Because the world was robbed of the rest of their story.

Because a mother asked to take a picture with me.

Because I was holding a sign with her dead son's name.

Because I do not know how that interaction does not change a person.

Because every month something in me changes.

Because I need to be changed.

Because there are small black and brown faces in the back seats of cars who look with

wide eyes and do, or don't, understand why we're there and 

why we need to be.

Because they will understand one day.

Because I want those babies safe.

Because I want them to always come home alive.

Because I never want to hold a sign with their name on it.

Because in the next car there is a small white face in the back seat with

wide eyes who understands, or doesn't, but

will never need to.