For the Survivors of the Un-numbered Dead by Brionne Janae

for the families of Nabra Hassanen, Tamir Rice, & Charleena Lyles

on hard nights when you can no longer pretend
what kills you isn’t killing you nights after mornings
like when they found the body of the girl bludgeoned
and shining with dew and you spent the day in her pictures
pictures her family had gathered to say look at all our love
at the smile as tender as lilies at the light of her
on hard nights where somewhere Nabra’s mother is emptying herself
in tears nights when you cannot roam the glass glittered streets of the city
without wondering how much more of this you can survive
nights when you dare death with slow walks down dark alleys
where not a soul would notice if a man with rage enough
to lace his fingers around your neck and cleave
what is trapped inside a body from what keeps it here
nights you are certain you cannot stay here any longer
here being both fixed and innumerable and coursing as the river
here being the city and what cries out from it here being what is lush
and unraveling from your window as you travel across all
that is beautiful as the hillside adorned in wildflower and fire
across what is smog choked and sick manifested destiny
here which is the edge of joy and the soft of Tamir’s sister
body slammed by an officer for love for needing to hold
what she had held all her life here being the chill of the cuffs
on her wrist as she calls for mercy
and the song the wind makes through the trees
here being an apartment halfway between despairs
where a boy and his sisters learn the law is what opens a mother’s body
to let love pool on the kitchen tiles is what makes a child
motherless here where depression says leave your body
says here is too much says you cannot carry it cannot breathe
cannot stay here says get up and go and on nights when you want to go
when you feel trapped between hells when you are Godless and weary
and still pray to Love because love wouldn’t keep you here
on nights when nothing keeps you here but love
and there is nothing but to wait for the opening
of the sky into pale blue of morning

Brionne Janae is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. She is the recipient of the 2016 St. Botoloph Emerging Artist award, a Hedgebrook and Vermont Studio Center Alumni and proud Cave Canem Fellow. Her poetry and prose have been published in, The American Poetry Review, Rattle, Bitch Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, jubilat, Sixth Finch, Plume, Bayou Magazine, The Nashville Review, Waxwing, and Redivider among others. Brionne’s first collection is titled After Jubilee and was published by Boaat Press. www.brionnejanae.com