For Terence
It’s like some evil game
nightmare edition
of Simon says
Why do so many people
who look like me
comb over the footage,
looking for a misstep?
The questions begin,
inevitable
hateful
cloaked in willful blindness
the cloak victim-blaming
always wears:
“Yeah but–was he
fully complying?
Why didn’t he
comply exactly?”
The wrong questions,
again
and again,
world without end
Just ask Charles Kinsey
if hands up & unarmed
& lying on your back
on the road
begging for reason
will keep a black man from being
shot if someone decides
he looks like a threat
because he is breathing
Like someone decided
12-year-old
Tamir was a threat,
sitting alone, dreaming
little-boy dreams
that will never come true.
I dream of a world where
people who look like me
will ask vastly different questions,
harder ones,
braver ones,
again and again
until this world ends
And a new world opens
one where police will be expected
to protect and serve
a father of four
car broken down
who has his hands in the air
Where de-escalation
is the absolute expectation
A world where
Terence Crutcher
would still be here
heart beating,
breathing,
alive.
eeo 
Yes.
Thank you for writing this.
There are people like you who ask these questions. Hopefully, they become more and more numerous.
XO
Thank you, Dawn, for reading and being a caring, thoughtful person.