You Let It Grow

Four hundred years. Four hundred years of opportunities to make it right. Four centuries of begging, pleading, praying, yelling, marching, uprisings. But you just let the wound of our anger, our outrage, our moans of grief, fester and ooze and become a puss-filled infected sore. You let it grow.

You tried to force a scab over it with the scraps of empty promises you threw to us, hoping it would pacify our bruised spirits, but another black life taken at your hands ripped the scab off the wound. You let the wound bleed and would tell us “it isn’t that bad” and dismissed our cries.