You sent them my way,
Put yourself in my path—
Smiled as you passed.
I missed your signals.
I missed your signs.

You brushed my arm,
Put your name in my head,
Smiled, gave me your card.
I missed your signals.
I missed your signs.

You cut my hair,
Put your hand on my head,
Smiled as you said that…
I missed your signals.
I missed your signs.

You watched me waiting,
Put your hand in my hand,
Smiled as we discovered—
I missed your signals.
I missed your signs.

You offered your love,
Put your ring on my hand,
Smiled, shared the moment.
I missed your signals.
I missed your signs.

You asked me to share,
Put us now, not me,
Smiling together.
I missed your signals.
I missed your signs.

You needed my help,
Put matters aside—
Smile fell from our face.
I missed your signals.
I missed your signs.

You should have known
Put these issues aside—
Smiled, and remembered.
I missed your signals.
I missed your signs.

Do my politics matter to you?
What I say,
Who I stand for—
Red or blue?

You talk down to me
when I stand up for my right.
You call me stupid,
like what I believe has no place in the light.
Red or blue.

Every conversation—
a confrontation.
We don’t listen.
We just wait to speak.
We don’t hear each other.
We don’t see each other.
Red. Or blue.

But when I show up to work,
and you’re the one on the table—
heart exposed,
life hanging in the balance—
should I even stop to ask:
Red?
Or blue?

Because out here,
in the real world,
that line we draw in our minds—
it disappears.

When it’s life or death,
when it’s breath or no breath,
when it’s me and you—
I have to be red and blue
just to deal with you.

Not because I choose to,
but because I need to.

Because underneath the votes,
beneath the noise,
we are more than colors,
more than sides,
more than lines drawn to divide.

And maybe,
just maybe,
we could remember that—
before the next fight.

Red or Blue

I wish I could
But you’ll soon see,
The words don’t always come to me.
I stutter, stall, unable to rant,
And what I’d say, I simply can’t.

I don’t speak much,
Though I wish I might,
But my thoughts don’t land just right.
From brain to mouth,
There’s something lost
A moment’s pause,
At such a cost.

They call me quiet,
Say I’m shy,
But they don’t know how hard I try.
To shape my thoughts into a stream,
To speak aloud what I dare dream.

I long to stand
And boldly say,
The things I hold back every day.
A public speaker, I’ve wished to be,
And I’ve worked hard in therapy.

They taught me breath,
To roll each sound,
But still my voice gets turned around.

So if I stutter
Please just know,
It breaks my heart
To let it show.

To simply speak
As you all do
To say what’s real,
To say what’s true.

But I stay silent,
Face composed
The quiet one
That no one knows.

I watch the ones I love
Drink slow,
Then slip-
From laughter into spectacle.
Bright-eyed,
I see too much.
Not by choice,
But by clarity I didn’t ask for.

They celebrate,
And I’m there-
But I can’t quite be there.
Their fun feels foreign,
A language I’ve forgotten
Or never learned.

Voices rise,
Inhibitions fall,
And I smile out of place,
Wishing I could feel
What they feel.
But I can’t.

I made a choice
That separates me.
In a world drunk on escape,
I choose presence.
And it feels like exile.

I’d find comfort
If they saw what I see.
If they stood where I stand.
But I am.
A strange creature,
Craving connection
But fearing the cost.

I don’t choose not to go.
I just… can’t.

Then it turns:
The stumble, the slur,
The ***** on the floor—
And still,
I stay silent.
Because judgment is lonely
And honesty isn’t invited.

I’m searching for truth
In a world that’s intoxicated.
And that’s
My struggle.

We are born with kindness in our hearts,
a quiet urge to give, to share—
but giving all would leave me bare,
standing where the weary start.

So many turn their heads away,
passing by with lowered eyes,
ashamed of what they can’t erase,
of empty hands and silent sighs.

Some pockets hold only dust and air,
while mine hold coins, a privilege earned.
I ate with ease before I shopped,
no fear my fortune might be turned.

I do not judge, I do not scorn,
but pity lingers in my chest.
Their path is one I’ve never walked,
yet sorrow whispers, manifest.

If I had wealth, would I bestow
or clutch it close in quiet dread?
It’s hard to know until you’re there—
just like the ones who beg for bread.

Who are they calling Them?
Like Them doesn’t have a name.
Like Them has no story.
Like Them just appeared one day
uninvited,
unwanted,
unwelcome.

Is Them different than me?
Does Them not bleed red, dream big, cry soft at night?
Does Them not hold memories the way I do
with trembling hands and silent prayers?

Who are they talking about when they say Them?
Oh… Them.
The neighbor. The worker. The mother. The son.
The one who speaks with a different rhythm,
prays with a different posture,
loves with a different fire.

Why are you so afraid of Them?
Do you think Them will replace you?
Take your place,
steal your space,
erase your name from the page?

There are fewer of Them than there are of you.
But still, you tremble.
Still, you point.
Still, you speak of Them with spit on your tongue.

You use harsh words to describe Them.
But I know Them.
I’ve laughed with Them.
Worked beside Them.
Heard Them sing when they thought no one was listening.

You claim strength,
but your fear betrays you.
You built this nation on the backs of Them.
Sent Them to die in wars you declared from safe rooms.
Expected Them to serve your plate,
then disappear before dessert.

But don’t you still need Them?
To harvest, to heal, to build, to teach?
To raise your children
and bury your dead?

I don’t want Them to go away.
I like Them.
I am Them.

And maybe…
maybe you are too.

If you go, you’ll never come back
Not whole, not unchanged.
The wind will take part of you,
The silence will teach you your name.

The trees will whisper truths
That cities never speak.
The stars will etch themselves
In the corners of your sleep.

And when you return,
You won’t know how to explain
The way a mountain
Made you weep in the rain.

If you go
You’ll never come all the way back.
Some part of you will stay
Where the world still remembers how to breathe.

MMR.
Three letters.
A shield forged in science.
But you turned your back,
Called it poison,
Chose pride over protection.

You read one blog.
Watched one video.
And suddenly,
You’re wiser than the centuries
That buried children
By the thousands.

You walk freely,
But carry death on your breath.
Invisible.
Unknowable.
Unforgiving.

The infant at the store-
Too young to be immune.
The neighbor with chemo-
Too weak to fight.
The pregnant nurse-
Counting heartbeats
That may never take their first breath.

You say,
“It’s my choice.”
But your choice
Becomes their grave.

The virus doesn’t care
What you believe.
It only cares
That you were kind enough
To let it in.

So when the fever comes-
When the rash blooms
Like fire under your skin-
When the breath shallows,
And your lungs forget how to rise-
Know this:

You could have stopped it.
You could have been the break in the chain.
But you chose to be the link.
And now,
You’re the strain.

They ask me if I’m proud to be white.
And I pause—
Not from shame,
But because I’ve learned not to answer
Without first remembering what came before me.

Proud of what?
Of conquest dressed up as progress?
Of freedom that came with a foot on someone else’s neck?
Of laws that wrote Blackness into *******
And whiteness into power?

My people wrote the rules,
Then broke the spirits
Of the ones they feared would rise.

They burned books
To keep minds dark.
They banned reading
Because education meant rebellion.
And rebellion from the enslaved
Was labeled violence,
While the chains weren’t.

They tore families apart,
Sold children like stock,
Then centuries later
Wonder why Black homes
Are fighting to stay whole.

They unleashed dogs on marchers,
Sprayed fire hoses at children
Just for asking to be seen.

This is how I remember.

I remember Emmett Till,
Fourteen years old,
Lynched for a lie.
I remember Tulsa, 1921,
Where success was a threat

Black Wall Street turned to smoke and ruin.

I remember redlining,
Where maps bled prejudice
And banks drew lines
That locked Black families out of futures.

I remember the war on drugs,
Where addiction in white skin
Was a health crisis,
But in Black skin,
A crime.

I remember George Floyd,
Face pressed to pavement,
A knee on his neck
For nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds
A public execution
That still needed a trial
To prove what we all saw.

This is how I remember.

And today
The Confederate flag still flies
On porches,
On plates,
On shoulders
Like a badge of glory.
Some still preach “heritage”
But won’t name what it honors
A war to keep humans in chains.

They talk of “states’ rights”
As if those rights weren’t
The right to own a man.

In some parts of this country,
They still act like the South won
Like their freedoms were stolen
When the shackles came off someone else.

And racism?
It didn’t die.
It just learned how to dress.
It put on a suit,
Picked up a microphone,
And ran for office.
It showed up in school curriculums
That call slavery a migration,
Or erase Black names from the pages.

It whispers at kitchen tables,
It votes in silence,
It marches in khakis,
And calls itself “tradition.”

This is how I remember.

I am a white man.
I didn’t own slaves.
But I live in the house they built.
And every brick
Carries the weight of what was done to build it.

I’m not proud of that.
But I won’t pretend it isn’t mine to reckon with.

I am proud of my shame.
Because shame means I still have a conscience.
Because if I can feel it,
I can face it.
And if I can face it,
Maybe I can change what comes next.

I remember
Because forgetting
Is the first act of violence.
Because pretending
Is how this all keeps going.

We don’t heal
By rewriting history.
We heal
By learning to carry it honestly.

This is how I remember
And this time,
I refuse to look away.

Author’s Note:
I am a white man.
Fourteen generations here in America
I sought my family history
I choose to remember all of our history—
not just the parts that make us proud,
but the parts that make us pause.
I refuse to wash it away.
Because truth, no matter how painful,
is the only path to justice.

No one holds the key to this door.
Not you, not me
Because we chose to close it gently,
Then locked it, lovingly,
From the inside.

Together, we stepped past the threshold,
And left the world behind.
No fear, no need to turn the handle,
No exit in our mind.

Here, inside this quiet space,
Our love is free to grow
Unseen, untouched, uninterrupted.
Just us.
And that’s all we need to know.

We’re not locked in out of fear,
But by choice, by trust,
No need for a key.
This room was made for us.