7. monster until proven ghost / 8. gone
I am always thinking about stories. I am always trying to change the rules about who gets to set them, tell them, define them. I am always trying to complicate The Narrative.
I know more about how Tyre Nichols died than about who he was alive.
“Here’s what we know about what happened in the approximately 54 minutes when Tyre Nichols was pulled over and brutally beaten by officers” is a sentence that reflects a series of choices about The Narrative.
I know more about the ostensible motivations of the farm worker who killed seven of his colleagues than I know about why people in their 60s and 70s are still toiling on farms.
Death is everyone’s story, eventually and inevitably. How people lived, and for whom, and the conditions under which they survived — that is a story too.
Attribution
4. coal awaiting spark & wind
5. guilty until proven dead
6. oil heavy starlight
7. monster until proven ghost
8. gone
9. phoenix who forgets to un-ash
10. going, going, gone
— from alternate names for black boys by Danez Smith