They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

by Hanif Abdurraqib

The world is undoing itself & I must tend to my vast & growing field of fears.

this type of love will surely be the death of us all. this type of love will shake the angels loose & send them running to their horns.

“We speak of heaven as if we’ve been there. As if heaven was a mile away.”

When a smiling, joyful black person says they’re “doing all right,” I imagine it’s because they know “good” may be too close to the sun. I imagine it’s because they’ve seen things burn.

There is something most comforting in this part of the song: Kendrick’s promise that God has Us. All of Us, sure, but Kendrick is talking about the Us who most need to remember that there is a God out there to be named, even if it isn’t the one we pray to, or even if we are not of a praying people. There is a God to be pointed at, and pulled close.

The thing our parents would always say to discourage us from wearing our pants baggy and low was that we’d never be able to run away from anyone. I most love the “Wipe Me Down” era of rap fashion because it didn’t consider the need for escape as a barrier to being the flyest person in the room.

If I have the destruction of something that I once loved to carry with me at all times, isn’t it like I still have a companion?

Heartbreak is one of the many emotions that sits inside the long arms of sadness, a mother with many children.

It’s all so immovable, our endless need for someone to desire us enough to keep us around.

The stakes are high and the capacity for mercy is not.

When I yell, I feel an immediate sense of guilt afterwards. Shame, sometimes fear.

This, too, is a response to grief. Covering yourself in the spoils of your survival

The silence may reward you briefly, but it always comes at the risk of something greater: your safety, your family, how the world sets its eyes upon you and everyone you love.

Nina Simone played the piano like she was cocking a gun.

The thing that we do on a day like this, where history arrives and reminds us of who it has buried, is that we look back and think about turning points. How a monumental day of violence changed everything that came after it. What hurts me the most is that we don’t get to do that here.

To attack the innocent where they feel most secure is cowardly, of course, but it is also a reminder. There is no safety from this. There will be no reprieve from the sickness that spreads and calls people to take up this level of violence. There will be no calm before the storm. There will only be the storm, and then another, louder storm. It will follow you to your homes, press itself between your sleeping children, hang over your shoulders at work, and yes, it will walk into your church, pray to the same God as you do, and then stand up and open fire.

perhaps life is too short for fear. There is always going to be something outside, waiting to kill us all.

There is no retaliation like American retaliation, for it is long, drawn out, and willing to strike relentlessly, regardless of the damage it has done.

We all choose our sins, and their measure. The ones we believe will render us unforgivable, and the ones that we will wash off with a morning prayer.

These things are what our entire American history is littered with. Who will not make it home alive so that someone else can be fed.

And the joke here is harder to find, but I think it’s that money knows no color, but our ability to reach it knows every color, every boundary imaginable.

It is a hard market for a white rapper who seems deeply invested and interested in anti-racist work. A black fanbase will undoubtedly show up for the party and leave for the preaching, and a white fanbase will endure the preaching for as long as they can in order to get to the party.

It is hard to keep missing someone when there’s no way to tell how long you’ve been without them.

Their question is often posed as How will I explain this person in the bathroom to my child? or How will I explain those two people kissing to my child? but rarely How will I explain to my child that people die and we do nothing?

I know nothing except that this grief is a river carrying us to another new grief, and along the way, let us hold a space for a bad joke or a good memory.