Be-ing , our combustion to be-coming . We are constructing a narrative
of explosion , 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 mesmerizing menace , like
all Black children who are murdered

then used as cautionary tales—passed away/  in the past/passed on
, 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 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
ruin of Black bodies

like a scar made sacred on concrete sidewalks : 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

, or ass/sumed us to be , been inexcusably deleted ; the denials are
in the details : the media mitigated matter of facts , and 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/ in the past/

passed on , 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/ in the past/passed on , is a tragedy that words alone
cannot conciliate

. We hear someone say dead Black children
like Paradise Lost . A light switch clicked off seventeen trillion cells

in the body , and them who ain’t Black
act like We never existed . Like just as many stars in the cosmos

suddenly went dark . The absence of a living presence—the distance
of lamentation , between passed away/ the past/

and passed on ; them been murdered , as in , a lack thereof .