After The Ferguson Decision, A Poem That Gives Name To The Hurt

Since George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin, I've been repeating these words by the poet Audre Lorde like a prayer. She writes:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

Each time I re-read this stanza from "A Litany For Survival," the chaos and confusion I feel is cleared away. The lines are clean and defiant. They name our aches, our hurts, the paradoxes of our living, and slay that demon that dogs our days, fear.

By the poem's end, I'm washed clean. It's a blessing and a baptism and a challenge to me to engage in a world that would seem to deny my life.

I needed it again, when news came of the shooting death of Michael Brown, and then again this week.

This poem is meant to break spells and fevers. That line, "we were never meant to survive" warns us of difficulties that will come. I think of this poem when I see photos of black millennials protesting police brutality. Fire and smoke envelop them as they face off with the police force of what was once just another city in the middle of America.

Lorde ends her poem with these lines:

and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

This is a poem fitting for these times.

Syreeta McFadden writes for The Guardian.

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