Clouds

I woke up feeling heavy and sad. My morning walk lifted the clouds for a bit, but they wrapped around me again soon after I descended back to the valley.

Today Ahmaud Arbery would have celebrated his 26^th birthday. My white son is 23--he runs in our neighborhood. I can’t stop thinking about Ahmaud’s beautiful mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones. I speak her name aloud.

With news events like this, my tendency is to either consume it and let it consume me or avoid it completely. There’s no middle ground for me. This story is swallowing me up. Running 2.23 miles and taking a picture are not enough—I can’t outrun the injustice and grief.

I’m reading My Grandmother's Hands, and I’ve been thinking a lot about racialized trauma, reptilian brains, and acts of violence that bypass reason. The murderers who stole Wanda Cooper-Jones’ light don’t deserve the benefit of a reptile-brain defense, and yet they are part of this generational cycle of lynching that infuses our bodies and systems. It’s so much bigger than these men, this southern town, this story.

These clouds will lift. Blackberry winter will turn back into spring. But in a time when we complain about wearing masks, I will wrap my arms around my son, knowing that we do not deserve the sense of safety we take for granted.