We Need to Talk

We Need to Talk | By Monica Edwards

I want a safe house 

A house with a panic room

Mi casa es su casa

I need a room to place my nerves

A space where my son’s place their black boy magic,

Casts spells over their pain.

This room of collections, a gathering of ideas placed back-to-back, 

Etched in stone for others to see.

These walls needs to remain safe

Home should be the last place I fear

Aura Rosser knows fear, and knows how it feels to become a brick laid to rest.

A tower of strong lifeless brown bodies

Late November, her body harden into clay , fired upon before she could identify her attacker to the police. 

Sometimes I am afraid

I will be a fallen foundation;

A crumbling brick wall designed to shield my children

Reminding them of their own brown bodies

Both can be fired upon and hardened.

I want a panic room

So they can scream their fears 

Where they can still be soft clay

And are not broken by police brutality.

At any moment, my boys know

I could be the next Breonna Taylor

laying in bed with my youngest because he had a bad dream

And pow! Society's assumptions fire through my door.

My peace is broken in ways

My boys can’t put back together

Murder can do that

Sometimes I panic in this room.

It’s me standing between them and the world

Pressed against my fear of not raising my boys to men

Police tape turned blindfold, turned noose

I want a panic room of joy and distractions

From a world that is nothing like it seems.

Floyd seemed scared

Murder will do that

A lot of conversations should happen if brown and black bodies mattered

When will my anxiety not feel like bricks on my back

stuck between a rock and a hard place to live

I don’t want my sons in a hard place

This country is all panic attack and no room to breathe 

As a brown woman 

Society shouldn’t make me feel

like a stone 

It takes a village not a wall.

United we stand but only when we are included in we

The writing is on the walls

Like scars waiting to be talked about

How many times do I have to be resilient

before you realize this isn’t working

We have to protect each other.

Have each other's back

when this country has our backs against the wall

No room.

Just panic