We're on our way back to school from gymnastics class
And only in Boulder, Colorado
My kids are singing John Lennon's "imagine" at the back of the bus
When Jesse stops herself mid-verse
Stretches her arm across the aisle like a sunbeam
Tugs at the hem of my shirt and asks
What does hatred mean?
Jesse is five years old
Anything I say she's going to believe
But I realize I don't know the answer
I don't know what hatred means
I could guess and say it's the opposite of love
I could guess and say
Jesse, hatred's why there are nothing but white faces
On our private-school bus
But Jesse isn't white yet
Go ahead and ask her
What color are you Jesse?
Well, it looks like I'm pink
Shane thinks he's orange
Skylar says she's tan
Rhett says he's see-through
See, you can see how my veins are blue
But they're red when I bleed
And I wish there was no such thing as springtime
Because I don't trust the machines
That will one day be planting seeds in these gardens
Teaching them
Some people are flowers
Some people are weeds
Rip the weeds by their roots
Ignore their screams
Tilt your own face to the sun
Take what you want
You are the chosen ones
Sitting Bull said white people are liars and thieves
I'd like to tell Jesse he was wrong
I'd like to tell her we didn't come like a time bomb
Teeth built of bullets
Gunpowder on our breath
That this land didn't weep when our feet
First mercilessly hit the ground
I don't want to say we drowned and maimed the children
Sliced long strips of their skin for bridal reigns
I don't want to say the moon was slain
The constellations dispersed like shrapnel
Mother's killed their babies
Then killed themselves
When they saw our faces on the horizon
And all that we left was a trail of tears
But if I have to say that I want to say the boats stopped there
I'd want to say the eaves never saw the sails of slave ships
Never heard the sound of chain links
But Jesse think slaughterhouse
Think people branded suffocating foaming at the mouth
Can you imagine what kind of pain you would have to endure
To throw yourself overboard 2000 miles out to sea
Lungs gratefully exchanging breath for saltwater
Gratefully exchanging life for death
Can you imagine being chained to your dead daughter
How many days would it take you to stop
Searching her hands for lifelines
To stop searching her fingertips for reminients of sunshine
To stop searching her wrists for a pulse
For just some sign of time turning backwards
To when you just knew
People would never do things like this
And Jesse this is not just a picture of our history
Not just a picture of our past
We've been hundreds of years
Measuring the size of their hearts
By the size of our fists
Erecting our bliss on the broken backs of dark skin
The present is far from gift wrapped
Ask New Orleans
Ask mothers in the South Bronx
Chasing rats out of their babies cribs
Ask the fathers of the kids
Who's lives we exchanged for cheap gas
Ask our prisons why jail bars always come in black
Ask Afghanistan
Palestine
Iraq
Ask the women in Thailand who's cancers build our laptops
Ask the mexican man working in a field fertilized by nerve gas
Ask his daughter when she's born without fingers
Or hands to pray with
Ask me how long I could keep going with this list
God might be watching
But we are not
You are white Jesse
There are bodies dangling
From the limbs of your family tree
Our people pull people from the soil like weeds
Breathe in our story
Force yourself to hold it in your lungs
Til you can hear the hymns sung beneath white sheets
'Til you can feel your own finger on the trigger of the gun
Feel yourself fire as they shout
Do not look away as bullet enters heartbeat
Now breathe out
This is where we come from
This is still where we are
Now where will we go from here
I don't believe we're hateful
I think mostly we're just asleep
But the math adds up the same
We can't call up the dead and say
Sorry, we were looking the other way
There are names and faces behind our apathy
Eulogies beneath our choices
There are voices deep as roots
Thundering unquestionable truth
Through the white noise
That pacifies our ears
The voices are clear
Don't tell me we don't hear
Don't tell me we don't hear
The moon being slain
The constellations dispersing like shrapnel
Don't you think it's time
Something changed