Hell is shaped for the hand of a wishful, foolish painter
Its caverns wait for us to paint over the mistakes again
And again
And again the walls become crude and rough under the layers of our harm.

I was on the brick and cobblestones one afternoon, among groups of wishful oppressors, their hands clenched in dried paint. They ask how to scrub it off. They’ve heard “Black Lives Matter” but they don’t know where, or when.
It’s here, and now, and everywhere, and always.

Hell is shaped like my young metatarsals, creaking and aching under some unrealized purpose.
Hell is shaped like a ladder that my ancestors soaked in lighter fluid
And waited for everyone else to scramble up.

Hell is shaped like venom tongues and weapons alchemied in colonialism’s genocide. It’s also shaped like disposable responsibility and eyes that stray from the fire and like greed in the flag with nails in the palm.

I was brought up in a stolen, and false, but beautiful and loving safety. I would give my sense of direction to let someone else’s baby have a memory of swimming the meters from one parent to the other in the shallows if the ocean– so small, so humbled, but so, so safe.

I was in a park when I had to write a lawyer’s defense fund number on my forearm. A cop car trailed our peaceful protest like an unwanted lantern. I am grateful, but maybe not well-deserved, to say that is the most scared I’ve ever been.

Hell is shaped like too-loose strings on an old guitar. No matter the harmonic chord, there will always be dissonance in the punishment of created evils.

I was not raised to believe in hell. I’ve been told by the outlying sign that it waits for me. I still think it is a metaphor. I wave my rainbow flag and breathe through my white skin. I am kneeling to be knighted by my moms and waiting to pull up those lying down. But I can’t reach for Dominique or Layla or Brayla or Tony or Muhlaysia or any of the names I’ve been burdened to forget because they are not here. I can’t reach for Michael, or Emmitt, or Breonna, or George, Ahmaud, Daunte, Eric, Sandra, Toyin, Trayvon, Elijah, or Moses.

Hell is shaped like a twisted funeral florist. It makes me want to scream, “God, let me have enough arms and energy to hold as many flowers as I can”, because I need to give them out while everyone is still here.