Election Night, 2016
I’m taking too long. I’m at a bar ignoring my friend’s call. I take another shot, a pill, a drag of a man’s cigarette out front. He smacks my ass. Cue the war on everything, a white man shrieks. I pray to a god who has no eyesight, drink myself plum for nerves to numb. Someone chucks a glass of tequila into a wall. I go home, cry into my roommate’s lap. My mother calls to tell me a woman from church has died. You know her, she says. Knew, I straighten. Sometimes I react to things I never touched. Behind the dumpster, a man tries to fuck some feeling into me. Blue where it matters. I want my roommate to change the channel. He asks why if nothing will change. The man I poured myself into, I can’t stop. Blame “the black” in me. I feed off the recognition. The first step in cleaning is to recognize the infection.