Airsoft
For Tamir Rice
Like a whisper from a friend
telling a secret, the gun
reveals itself only to invite—
not start any trouble, mind you,
just to invite—the boy
who listens to come out to play.
And the boy knows not so much,
what the gun’s pellet says
as he understands what the pellet
will mean to say, whistling
through a windy afternoon
past onlookers who neither hear nor see
the streak of inhuman
intent searing through the ether,
so he takes his Airsoft pellet gun in hand
as he might take his laces in hand
to tighten them more securely
around his juvenile ankles—
that’s to say, without much care,
but just out of habit before taking off
to run; everyone runs faster
with tight laces. This makes sense,
of course, and the hope to run can excite
as much as hitting full stride with wind
washing over a boy’s face.
And toy guns masquerade as lethal guns
in a boy’s dreamland where no one dies,
where they simply lie down and play dead,
but they live to play on.
As mysterious as a cat in a box,
a toy gun in a Black boy’s pocket,
the gun neither dead nor alive,
unless offered a chance to empty
his pocket to solve the paradox
of what a day might hold.
