{where were you}

where were you
the night they were born,
the morning the world heard their first cry?
where were you
when they took their first steps and smiled with pride?
where were you
when they learned to be afraid of the dark
and cried out for their mother to comfort
the introduction of fear?
where were you
as they went to school
and began to be shaped by ideas
that would define them,
not based on merit,
but by a disrailed system everyone claims is not their job to fix?

where were you
when a voice welled up inside of them
but was silenced by ideologies we’ve all neglected to correct?
where were you
when there was no choice but to live as they were shown
and fed to a system that couldn’t live without them
but wouldn’t allow them to live?

where were you
when silence became a prison
they no longer wished to be condemned to?
where were you
when pain, racism, neglect and death
manifested into actions that gained the attention of a nation
but received little support?

where were you
when black lives became irrelevant
and debatable as whether or not they were worthy of fighting for or living?

where were you?

where are we
because black lives matter
and it’s a shame we have to debate that truth.

so here we are …

“in the end, we remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.