the skin     he had tried to bench press

250 pounds without warming up

everything has a limit    everything has a seam

I cursed his arrogance

the bar came down a slow guillotine

blunt   the shade of moonlight

when something in him failed

I was a witness     when his pectoral tore

I was a witness       it was not sudden

the flesh separated from the flesh

he barely screamed

I had to drag him through the dust

on the stairs from the weight room

All the while he shouted I’m pretty

I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine I don’t need

to go anywhere    He thrashed in my arms

a new born   bird     featherless   sputtering

and if I let him go he would have been free

the way we know free     wounded     lonely

sure that we would lose him

for the whole season

He got loose in the hallway of the school

we did not pay for     He ran the run of a beast

who is one arrow short of understanding

until he fell down in front of the admissions office

its glass door      its many white women

he lay there clutching his useless arm

telling me to go fuck myself     all of this still in front

of the admissions office      until I took him

by his shoulder   became something like a mother

if a mother can fear most their child

being exactly where they put them

if a mother can be like my mother

Medaria stop with this foolishness

white people are looking at you

in many ways these white women thought they were our mothers

I was afraid of that        there were only four Black boys in our grade

even as seniors   I feared a slow guillotine     the brief blade

of a white woman’s smile     might have been the end of us

If every birth is an act of mercy

we lived within the most temporary country

we did not belong there       none of us

What greater mercy was there than to silence

the grief in its crib before it ended us all

White people are looking at you

Medaria got up     we walked to the trainer

All the while he mumbled like a sad radio

I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS #51