Dear All Lives Matter

Dear white person. Dear “blue lives matter”. Dear 2nd Amendment protector. Dear gentrifying hipster. Dear social conscious warrior who has that one friend of color. Dear “all lives matter”. Dear whoever you are.

Your life matters. Whatever you do to put food on the table for you or your family matters. Who you love matters. The god you believe in matters. I don’t want you to die. I’m not going to cheer in the glory of your death. But I also don’t want to die. You see, we’re all human. But some humans kill other humans. And sometimes they don’t know why.

The hardest part of being human is being human. That often times our brains are pre-wired, our lives are pre-destined, that to be human is to either a) constantly lean against and “wake up” to these wirings or b) never see them. That the capitalist, hegemonic, white supremacist patriarchal system (or whatever you want to fucking call it) has my enemies fu*ked up too. That we are all fu*ked up. That some humans are born with hatred in their body before they even know the word for that pain. That some humans, like me, are born with a fear in their bodies that knows no limitation.

Some humans have to make sure their loved ones hear “I love you” as their last words even if they’re just going to the grocery store or to work or to walk down the street. Some humans never have to tell their kids the truth at bedtime. Some humans get to believe in make-believe. So let’s make believe.

Let’s make believe that humans are all valued the same. That you want me to be okay and I want you to be okay. Whatever the fu*k “okay” means. That I will never want you dead just because of the color of your skin. Can we agree to that? That I don’t deserve to die. That I have a right to life if I’ve never hurt you. That I have a chance. Can you make believe that we can learn from our failures, from our wiring, from the things we do not understand? Can we believe in a world like that?

Yes, all lives matter, but time and experience has proven that my black life does not. Can we make believe that it won’t destroy the world to just say: Black Lives Matter? That if you said it once, the fabric of our human-ness would not unwind, but stitch us closer together?