When Freddie Grey died, and the looting started, ferociously, and we talked about it in school, I remember a girl saying “this isn’t my Baltimore” and I think that is when it started. That is when I looked around and realized something here was not like the others. That is when I saw them for what they were: silent. It felt almost as if I was in a dream where no one can hear or see me, but I’m screaming, louder than imaginable, for people to realize. Like in the movies that repeat days - groundhog day for instance— when Phil just yells at everyone to realize the day sare repeating, that everything is a cycle that he cannot escape, but no one else can understand him— like he’s speaking another language like his facts don’t make sense. That’s what it’s like I think— every day repeats, nothing changes, but in the end, it is a special act, a learning moment, that snaps him out of that rotating timeline. I think George is us learning. I hope George is what has convinced them of the time loop. But then, of course, that was me— I was Phil yelling, and no one could understand. No one could see me, I was speaking a strange language, I was irrational and factless.
                                                                                                                        *
    Now, they see. I hope. Now it seems like they see. Now, I smile and I don’t feel sadness behind it. Now, I want to live to see what comes of this. 
                                                                                                                        *
     After the transcripts come out everything feels 3D. It already feels like it’s fading, like people are starting to forget again, but still, the silly thing in my chest continues to hope. In the tapes, he says he can’t breathe so many times, and I can see through the page, almost like it is translucent, and I can see his anxiety, his claustrophobia, and how much I wanted to cry when I got pulled over once, by a nice cop on my birthday. How I couldn’t move and I could breathe but it didn’t feel right to be breathing fine. And so I read George's words and I can hear and see everything from all angles and it makes me want to cry more because I haven’t watched the video, I can’t watch the video, but now this feels worse because I am living it. Now, I can feel the narrative. I am a writer and I know what writing does, I know how words snake through the thinnest parts of you and leave remnants there. I know how you can read a novel and suddenly be more a part of it than of yourself, and that’s how it felt, really. Like I was more a part of George than me. Like I was there, a helpless thing, watching the past happen and still, of course, not being able to stop any of it. 
                                                                                                                        *
    Even when I read it though, I can see the gaps. The reasonable doubt. The “are you sure”? Between the lines, I see Chauvin and Lane concocting the story, making George more frightening, rationalizing it all. After almost twenty pages, the explaining starts, like their actors trying to ensure the audience knows what they should be seeing. They explain maybe four or five times, what happened, what is happening, but all I can hear is George’s silence. All I can hear is the fact that George’s voice is not in the conversation anymore. Like he is the elephant in that room. They talk and talk about resisting, kicking, not listening, like we’re in some kindergarten classroom and not the bloodiest country I’ve known, and they say “basically” this and “basically” that like this isn’t always life or death for us. Like we aren’t “basically” dead anyway. 
But it’s like surround sound, really. I can see through the words, like X-ray vision. I can see George, there on the ground, hoping for a miracle, and the men, devising, excusing, pondering what the story will be when this man doesn’t come home. And I can bear to see the video because then I will actually be there and I can’t be there when George isn’t even there. I can’t be there when he doesn’t even exist to them.

So many people have died since George, and yet, has anything happened? Breonna is another black woman becoming an inevitable, unchangeable joke. That is a story for another time though. That is a story that cannot fit a page like this comfortably. But now, I’m not sure what hope means. I’m not sure what to hope for because I’ve never seen true freedom and people just seem to get crueler. I read the wrong side of twitter two days ago and I haven’t been able to shake that polarization, that hate. How can I live, breathe, walk around, when people want me silent, unmoving, suffering, or dead? How can I exist when someone else wants me to just… stop for no reason other than their preference? The world is so cruel, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to get past that. I don't know if I'm strong enough to know the world and be in it at the same time. I don't know if I'm strong enough to handle that cruel existence. I don’t know if any of us should even have to be. And isn’t that so unfair? Isn’t that just the worst thing? That we have to be stronger than anyone should and we still die? That we begin to have a panic attack and the police, perched on our throats, ponder how they’ll explain our deaths? That we exist and try and want to love and be loved but all we get is blue and red lights and men who wear hats that say “You are not human, you do not matter, make America white again”?