Our streets tremble these days. They quake with so much wrong and woe. How can we think of green garlands and twinkle lights, or send carolers out on the streets still stained with the blood of our sons?
Ashen mothers offer their call and response from one street corner to the next, a slow dirge then an anguished cry. They clutch graduation portraits to their chest. Stand in front of cameras testifying to the humanity of their children, the inhumane means of their death. They dress in black.
These women know the funeral liturgy by heart, by hearts broken time and time again as brothers, nephews, uncles and neighbors fall.
Emptied arms. Graves too full of brown bodies given no benefit, only doubt compounded by suspicion and a profiling that springs from the dark crevices of our skewed humanity.
It goes on and on like this, the woes echoing down broken roads marked with potholes and the residue of chalk outlines.
Sing with us the sad songs of loss. Keep your carols of joy for another neighborhood.
Read the rest over at SheLoves Magazine today. It is the final lament in the four part series Diana Trautwein and I offered this season. Advent gives us space to lament, space to remember why we so desire the arrival of a deliverer…
Leave a Reply