Every year I sit down to write my reflection before Martin Luther King, Jr Day. Usually my thoughts begin to form weeks ahead of time, swirling in my head as I process what I feel and need to say. This year, I struggled.

The ugliness of racism, which is always there, feels more overwhelming to me this year. There is so much to say and yet, if I’m honest a part of me thinks “what’s the point?” and another part feels that there are more expressions, explanations, indictments, rebuttals and real-time reactions than ever before which say so eloquently what I wish to express. I am stuck with wondering “what else do I have to add?”

I thought about just making a list of links to the wonderful pieces that are out there already; works that have moved and challenged me around race and racism this year. And then I started to think about the purpose of blogs, essays, prose and how we use language and the refrain “words” kept coming up for me. What is the purpose of a word? So, this year my reflection comes in a different form- a poem of sorts- as I try to untangle within myself my own motivations for these reflections and to understand a society damaged by racism, generally, and anti-blackness, specifically .

Words are not adequate
Words are too small
(11 pt font)
Words cannot capture
-are never enough to encompass the feelings, emotions and impact
(racism)
Yet words are powerful
Words have meaning
Words are both
weapon
and
balm
Words reveal dreams
(told by a King)
and expose dreams unfulfilled
(“a dream that one day this nation will rise up, to live out the true meaning of its creed”)
Words empower movements
(#blacklivesmatter)
and demagogues
(#trump4president)
They tell stories
(I wish I never knew)
of names
(I wish I never heard)
(because then they’d be living their stories, present tense, not exist as names spoken, past tense)
like Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland
(you know the list keeps going and going, right?)
Words assign
identity
(black boy) (“whose size made him look much older”)
culpability
(“and who had been warned his pellet gun might get him into trouble that day”)
blame
(“it was reasonable to believe the officer who killed the boy believed he was a threat”)
excuse
(“a perfect storm of human error”)
Words distract
(why aren’t we talking about black on black crime?)
Words describe
the mundane
(playing in the park, walking down the street, driving a car)
the profane
(shot in less than 2 seconds, left in the street for 4 hours, found dead in her cell)
the obscene
(every comment section , every news article)
They wrap around each other twisting, obscuring, knotting
(truth and lie) (opinion and fact)
Words maintain
(status quo) (white supremacy)
They indict
exonerate
justify
(race) (constructed)
They defend and dismiss
(but he’s a good person)
They explain
(good and bad are not relevant) (systemic racism)
Words express
pain
and anger
and love
and frustration
and joy
and
Words cannot
explain the unfathomable
make us forget
bring them back
Words are inadequate
Words are powerful
(words are all I have today)