To Alton Sterling’s Son
Day One On the heels of your father’s murder, you stood at a press conference with your mother, your arm draped around her shoulders. You stood there for a brave moment—you, in your school-boy striped polo shirt, left to be the man of the house in the wake of your daddy’s fresh death. But the weight of it all—the flashing cameras and expectant microphones; your mother’s halting voice and ragged breathing as she read her statement; the memory of the moving images of the cop shooting your father at point-blank range—bullet after bullet after bullet penetrating the same chest you have hugged countless times—became too much to bear, and when you crumbled, I wished to God that his eternal chest, his divine arms, would have been there to catch you. This is who was visible: a web of black men who curved around you and your mother like a crescent moon embracing the black sky. And there was something Godly in their actions. I am my brother’s keeper. I hope that, even in your grief, …