Two men on the road.

One white
The other black

One with the Bible
The other with the Qur'an

Why is it important?

After all they are seeking the same.

America has never been great.
Built on the backs of stolen people on stolen land.
We’re a melting ***, they say, a conglomeration of cultures and ethnicities,
But words mean nothing, when time and time again our neighborhoods are filled with injustice,
Our streets only know carnage.
Our protectors unleash violence upon civilians and our leaders continue to justify acts of brutality.

America is on fire
And the smoke clears and dawn breaks,
We will continue to fight for a new beginning.

Let me tell y’all something:
The white man don’t care about our suffering.
The privilege is too bright to see us.

The white man don’t care about us.
The white man wants to see us get shot,
The white man wants to see us wither and perish.

But who built America on their backs,
Bare handed, and
Whipped into submission?

We did.

We will take back America.
We will take back our streets,
Paved with the blood and tears of our people.
This is our America.

Not whitewashed and stained red with racism.

This is your America.
Where when we say, “Stop! Don’t shoot!”
You shoot anyways.

This is your America.
Where when we say, “I can’t breathe.“
You continue to suffocate us.

This is your America.
Where when we say, “Help.”
You continue to let us suffer.

This is your America.
Where the president calls us thugs,
And threatens to shoot us and our freedom.

This is not my America.

This is your America.
Where you shoot us for having cell phones.
Where you terrorize our sons and daughters.
Where you **** us for being black.

Who gonna protect us?
Not cops drunk on their own power and superiority.
Not the president blinded by racism.
Not our white “allies” who stand by and watch us burn.

But if we burn,
You burn with us.

If you **** us,
You die with us.

We tried peace,
We tried awareness,
But we always end up with violence.

We’re scared,
But who can blame us?

You’re killing us with your American Dream,
You’re murdering us with your American Dream,
You’re suffocating us with your American Dream.

This is your America—
Not mine.

We will take back America.
We will take back our freedom
Or we will die trying.
And that is the American Dream.

I passed through the airport in Minneapolis once.

Maybe, we brushed elbows in the security line. We took off our shoes side by side while they poked through our luggage.

That's when it hit me: there are so many people I'll see once and then never see again. Like, one look is all I'll get, for life!

I walked straight through the metal detector and never looked back.
And now, I keep my distance: six feet away as six feet under, masks as muzzles so that we speak only in glances.

I should have given you a better look on my way to the gate,
before the flights to our final destinations.

Every meeting is both a reunion and a rift.

Strangers like us move apart
with each hollow hello or comment about the weather.

I mean, what if every meeting like that was a loss?

We are good as dead to each other
on arrival and departure,
footprints swept clean by
the wind created from dead bodies
walking the other way.

I should have said this to you
about the virus
as proof of our survival,
how we’re in this together, how your loss is mine.

Each new disaster,
natural or otherwise,
keeps seizing our lungs and
our last breaths like we have
nothing to say.

I have died a million times
Master's whip
Has left my back a million lines
Each body left broken
Connections lost
Cut a million vines
Each body left breathless
"I can't breathe" the words screamed a billion times