69th Murder

True Story
A gun shot to the head...dead.
He's just laying there, in a picture sent through Whatsapp: DEAD.

Everything in me says I should feel something.  I should feel more than I do. He was my little cousin. The cousin I barely knew.  I do feel for my aunt, she's one of my favourites, the sweetest soul you'll ever meet.  I feel like I want to embrace her and make sure her pressure stays stable.  She's away, so I'm unable.

Other than that, I feel nothing.  I am not lost for words.  No tears are shed.  But my little cousin, he's dead.  I thought of one of the 2 memories I have of him - his mother was alive then.  A time when I thought all my cousins and I would remain strong friends.  We were by my grammy, affectionately called "Mammy".
He kept farting, as kids we just laughed.  Then his mother spanked him with a big rubber scissors - I think it was Christmas; for passing the stink gas.  I was shocked and angry that she beat my friend but here we are today, someone took his life away and I struggle to remember the sound of his voice.  Not by choice. By circumstance.  We all lost touch some how, and cousins I lived to laugh with, I barely know now.

Maybe I'm a little selfish cause I'm thinking about me, and my inability to cry while those closest to him, are trying to figure out why. They cry.
What I do feel is compassion, for those who saw him in the street, with a puddle of blood, pooled at their feet.  What I do feel is fearful, that the murders continue while grandmothers, mothers, brothers and sisters mourn.  What I do feel is anger, another black man, gone.


My reality
After 11 pm last night, while electricity was off and all I could hear was the generator from the Mall, my father told my mother the way my cousin sounds - she should call her sister, Ann.  Then I got the news: my cousin's body laid in the road dead, while people snapped pictures and the police took forever to arrive.  To know we live in a world where it almost seems easy to take a life it's mortifying, I guess the saying is fitting.  He's in a better place now.

RIP D.A.