Counting Descent

by Clint Smith

This is a protest against isolation, against loneliness, against thinking you’re the only one experiencing the trauma that leaves a man full of cracks. Didn’t you say that, James? That books showed you that you weren’t alone in your pain? You talk about humanity, but what is more human than seeing yourself in another? I remember when holding me would have gotten you killed. Now you pen these pages yourself. Is that not a protest, James? Is that not resisting all that they never meant for us to do? We’ve got to protest on these pages. This ink be our picket line. How can we write about the soil and not talk about the blood? How can we write about the tree and not talk about the noose? Ain’t no ars poetica here, James. This here is for our survival.