Stop broadcasting our deaths poem

To be a witness is to continuously die little by little.
Every time a black body
Witnesses another black body’s death,
They are witnessing their own death.

They say “This could be you,
This could be your brother,
This could be your sister,
Your uncle,
Your mother,
Your grandma,
Your child.”
We say it back to ourselves too;
“This could be us.” Yet we say this,
Instead of saying “this is me,”
“This is my death.”
For to say it would be
unfathomable,
Too hard to swallow,
Too hard to live with.

Yet it is truth.

Every time a black body
Witnesses another black body’s death
They too die a little.
For every last breath,
Every “I can not breathe,”
Is our own gasp of breath,
Our very own loss of breath.
And even though we continue to breathe,
We do not breathe the same,
That piece of us has already died,
There is no going back to before being such a witness,
There is no fully coming back to life.

And while we may deny this to ourselves,
Out of fear,
Out of self-preservation,
Out of survival,
Our bodies can not hide this truth.
For our bodies instinctively understand
the truth our eyes can not fully register,
Or choose not to fully register;
Our very own deaths.

That is why we say
Stop killing us.
Stop killing me.
Because when you kill them,
You are killing me.

I write this for George.
I write this for Breonna.
I write this for Ahmaud.
I write this for every black murder.
I write this for my own death.
I am angry. I hope you are too.

Jolie Brownell