Be-/coming , is our smoldering to Be-/ing , constructing a narrative
of combustion , as in survival , or the desperate subjective , both sans

and simultaneously a prerogative of fable : a girl negotiates a night
-darkened path (as though she knew the forest well enough

to ignore the darkness) , and disappears into an alleyway shortcut
from catcalls , where she confronts a plantation lullaby’s warning

of evil . In this case , a 15-year-old Black girl named Latasha Harlins
enters a mom ‘n’ pop and forfeits her life . The Black body

, like a pagan stone fetish viewed as a heretical menace , like all
Black children who are murdered

then used as cautionary tales—passed away/ passed on/in the past
, like Emmett Till’s story , like Tamir Rice’s cowboy gone to glory

, the bright-eyed innocence of spilled iced tea been Skittle-ed . . . is
a misunderstanding !? of how so many anomalous , everyday stories

of murdered Black children overlap . Their abridged existence
reduced to a warning . The statistically probable absence filled with

rage , the emptiness of every condolence turned a heart to stone , and
a mother’s grief seeded in the upturned earth of a freshly dug grave

. Our pain muraled on public walls , the sneakers , in memoriam
, strung from powerlines , and loss , billboard-silkscreened on T-shirts

like an arrow shot into no longer distance . The blood-splattered
, repeated ruin of Black bodies

like a festering scar made sacred in cellphone videos : a biased God
pointing a gun directly at our targeted diaspora . The cam footage

been obfuscated by the cooked narratives of an/a [im]perfect white world
. A recontextualization ? of something They should not have done , again

, or ass/sumed us to be , been surreptitiously deleted . The denials are in
the details : the media mitigated matter of facts , and in-house exoneration

of whomever is at fault . The entitled and expendable be-come
intertwined , and the vitriol that impedes the interrogation of his-story

, as the real story is concealed in the shadows , as far from passed away

/ passed on/in the past , as possible

. But the grief and the anger , still a life/pulse in the city—the now toxic
grounds of what used to be Empire Liquor Market

, Latasha’s gravesite in Paradise Memorial Park— passed away/ passed on/
in the past , is a recurring tragedy that words alone cannot reconcile

. We hear someone say dead Black children like Paradise Lost , forever
. A light switch clicked off seventeen trillion cells in the body , and They

, who ain’t Black , act like We never existed . Like just as many
sparkling stars in the cosmos suddenly went dark . The absence of

a living presence—the bereaved distance of lamentation , between passed
away/ passed on/in the past

; them been murdered , as in , a lack thereof .