When the day dawned,
that first pink light of day,
streamed across your faces as each of you lay sleeping.
You lived, you breathed, you had dreams.
By days end, the three of you and four others,
all lay bleeding, for what strange twisted reason?
It does not really matter.
By days end, your three young lives were gone.
What was left was the grieving.
The questions, the questioning.
The finger pointing, the assuming.
The chest thumping, the grandstanding.
But for those closest to you,
for those you held most dear,
comes the realization,
that pain and sorrow, those two melancholy twins,
have depths that they did not know existed.
And what of my city, my town, my street?
What of those who did not know you?
What of those whose daily lives,
daily take them past the place your blood was spilled?
After the TV lights have left,
After the outrage has died,
After all but those who loved you most,
have forgotten your names.
How can we continue to honor your lives?
How can we not look at the particular whys,
but instead at the broader why,
Why in this City, on that night,
were your three black loved lives deemed so cheap.
As the day ends, and the sunset moves to dark.
Know that many loved you.
Many who never knew you in life, now care for you in death.
Know that in some hearts your deaths have ignited small flames.
Those flames and those embers of those flames,
those flames that call for equality, equal opportunity, and hope,
are the only flames after all,
that can burn away the past,
and bring about a new glorious dawn to a better world.
Raekwon Manigault
Jonah Barley
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