I cried in class today, so that’s how things are going.
I’ve been feeling everything so deeply lately and I needed a way to process the fact that no one is being held accountable for the murder of Breonna Taylor. I wrote this on September 24, 2020.
— Maika
I cried in class today, so that’s how things are going.
I don’t quite have the words to capture what it’s like to have co-written a book with my sister almost two years ago about a young Black girl who is killed by the police and then elevated to national renown. Whose death sparks outrage. Protest.
To then have a parallel moment play out in the public eye the way Breonna Taylor’s has is... it’s a literal horror come to life. I keep thinking about her family, grieving. Forced to try and put the pieces back together after such a violation against someone’s humanity. And not just any someone.
Their someone.
Their sister.
Their daughter.
Their family.
Their loved one.
This is so personal.
It’s like a scab you thought was finally healed but is actually festering underneath. And then you’re walking by unaware and the injured body part snags against something and rips. Just like that. Everything’s exposed, bubbled up to the surface again. But this time the injury is deeper than before.
It feels like there’s no healing from this. How can you heal when your entire existence is under attack? Would the healing come from outside, the very source of so much of your pain? Or from within, the scar tissue that makes up your insides so mangled after generations of being told time and again you don’t matter, that you’re unrecognizable?
Or is that just me?
When Maritza and I have to discuss this book, it’s heavy. Because it’s not just the weight of the words on the pages that we feel. It’s the reality of it. A woman was awoken from her bed in the middle of the night and wrongfully shot and killed in her own home in the United States of America—
and nothing happened to her killers.
That is wild. Lawless. A land run by the thugs they like to claim we are. And I am angry and hurt and sad and grieving and raging and feeling so many things with nowhere for them to go.
But we do go on. Time pushes us forward, further away from the moment, until the familiar wound stitches itself back up and it’s the next time you’re wandering along and...