Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn't begin the same way, each time it begins it's the same.

From my living room, where I have spent the past few days immersed in The News, I can hear and see both protestors and police. The protestors are chanting: “Stop killing us!” and “Don’t shoot” and “Justice for George Floyd”. Some of the police are on horseback and some are on bicycles and through the relatively safety of my window their armour reminds me of the characters in a first-person shooter.

All my open tabs are about violence. “Helmets vs hard hats for rubber bullets”. “Tear gas vs smoke bombs”. “How to treat pepper spray exposure”. The kinds of things you research before you make decisions about whether to ask photographers to go out into the field.

In my inbox, emails from brands oscillating between whatever version of “this is so awful, but we’re down for the cause” they could get their lawyers and PR teams to approve and “get ready for Pride month with 50% off all rainbows!”

In the group texts, shared commiserations about yet another cycle of white acquaintances and friends bleeding their guilt and ~exhaustion~ and their freshly-burnished ally credentials all over us, as if we do not live this every day, as if we have not been here before, as if we will not be here again.