There was a pulsing beat circling in my cells,
crazed, damaging, mistaken metaphors hurting
me from within, scarred, charred, alarmed, chaotic
songs sickening from the beginning until the ending
rhythm, three officers knocking the door down
with a battering-ram to my apartment.  My heartbeat
was increasing with fear as my boyfriend reached
for his firearm for protection.  There was an unsettling
feeling within my subconscious, a dangerous drum
beating with flaming thunder, 22 shots fired, 8 bullets
blasting my beautiful body, shouldering wrecked poetry
and brutal verbs filled with swollen diction, my name,
Breonna Taylor, vanishing in the wind, a young black
woman gone too soon, full of amazing dreams that will
never be seen.