I'm Not Dying with You Tonight

by Kimberly Jones

“Love you later.”

wearing tennis shoes.

I say tennis shoes and people look at me like I said they're wearing bananas....I'm from the West coast, i now live on the East coast.. I'm told my word choice sky sneakers is dated and makes me old... This is supposedly the dialog of a teen, so perhaps the term is regional...though at one point the very girl who made the comment mentions Pennsylvania...which is where I now live....interesting.

“We are only as good as the five people around us,” Marcus says, up in his pulpit now. “Mostly because we share the same value system as those five. So he with them, then he made a choice on livin’ like them. He can be an eagle, but if he choose to flock with pigeons, he gon’ have pigeon ways.”

So true

When you push people to their breaking point, and they ain’t got no power, they’ll find a way to take it.

And when they do,they don't go about it in a way that is expected or makes sense to anyone but them

I don’t get this neighborhood or how people here feel. I don’t understand Black’s friends stealing or pulling guns on each other. I don’t get those white guys with their Confederate flags antagonizing everyone.

I thought all these things as a reader and relate what she was going through....