I’m Sorry (A Reflection on Ahmaud Arbery's Murder)

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Ahmaud Arbery.

As a white person,
I’m sorry.

Black people,

I know this isn’t enough,
isn’t new,
isn’t over.
I know I don’t understand
how it hurts you.

I see a young man
running in late winter,
I see a child,
all grown up,
running

on a day that felt

like early spring,
shot dead.

I didn’t know him.
Maybe he ran
for his health
or for time to himself,
or because he liked it —
ran freely, he thought,
for his own reasons,

he went for a run.
Shot dead.

Shot down:
all the years he worked
to get to where he was,
how he learned to live,
slowly,
what to carry,
what to let go,
all the love
he felt and gave
and took in,
all the pain he endured
and the laughter that filled him.
All his hopes.
The way the sun felt on his face,
the moments he fell into easy company
with those he loved,
shot dead.

White killers
try to tie

their own pain and fear
to the necks of
people of darker skin
who have been the body of suffering
of slavery and murder and poverty and incarceration
for too long,
whose existence is reason enough
for the sickest among us,
addicted to their religion of hate.

But none of us are asymptomatic.

White people,
we, I, must track our blind spots
and watch for how we fall to sleep
when
this old plague of our collective soul
strolls by in the flesh,
too busy or frightened or ashamed to say,
No,
to its whispers or shouts,
to recognize how our own whiteness
protects and uplifts us
without us having to ask.

How can we learn our true history
and make change in our own hearts,
in how we spend our days and energies?
How can I take time
to listen, learn, relinquish, speak up, share and help
so others,
my Black sisters and brothers,
can make choices,
can walk sit breathe live

run

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Photo: istock

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