Sandra Bland

"Believe it or not, I am still not over Sandra Bland

Go figure, right?

I mean a black girl, with a loud mouth, and take not shit from nobody serving it blood running through her veins

You know, they type to own her own body or swear she did anyways

And parade around all proud and what not of this churn or woman and darkness she has bled

It's almost as if she had a voice or tried to use it somehow before the noose and/or trash bag snatched it out of her throat

And I know it's hard to believe that months later your ears are hearing the same damn poem

And, trust me, it's hard to believe that my fingers are writing it

But how eerie it is to see a woman so much like you die and have it called a mystery

You know we crowded around Twitter that day, and so many after, trying to solve a riddle

Like, how long can a black girl lives if she speaks when not spoken to?

And how closely can America watch and still not see the blood spilling from the brown?

Must you drown in it to realize?

Must we all go missing?

When I stand in the center of campus and say that, "I AM SANDRA BLAND" 

And a sea of white faces look on in confusion

Or look away in disgust

I realize how suicide =CAN be murder

And we are still trying to solve the riddle

The answer is clear:

It is easy to be killed by oppression

To have it fester beneath your skin and have it suck all the light and/or blood out of you

I do not know what type of pain one must cower under to hope for death instead

I do not know who wrote this riddle, who thought it funny

But I do know that I AM Black

That I AM Woman

That sadness accompanies my loud mouth and slides beneath my toes daring to swim its way into my throat

That, itself, is reason to believe they tied the noose

So. Believe it or not, I am still not over Sandra Bland.

Go figure, right?"