To My Fellow White People

I hear, over and over again,

that you are "colorblind." That, as the human race,

we are all one.

I don't know how to write this.

But when I see, over and over again,

the taking of black life,

color becomes more than a coincidence. 

Freddie (he owned a knife)

Michael (he jaywalked)

Eric (he sold cigarettes)

Sandra (she forgot her turn signal)

Did the punishment fit the crime?

Our America has never been theirs:

I have never lived

with the fear of being pulled over

and never seeing my family again.

I have never lived

with the thought that tomorrow

I could become a hashtag.

I have never lived

with the knowledge that if I should die for my color's sake

my humanity, my guiltlessness, they'll try to take.

So don't say that we are one,

that you are colorblind,

that "all lives matter."

Don't say we all bleed the same–

it is not our blood that has been spilt.