In Inhale

Regina A. Bernard-Carreño

courtroom sketch of Derek Chauvin. NBC News

I sit in the same room where last year, on my little TV, I watched the murder of George Floyd. A year later, on that same TV, a reporter reads the headline: the man who murdered him has been found guilty.

It still hurts when I breathe. I try to push past the tightness lodged in my chest. A year ago, among the numerous outrages, I wrote in this same magazine of more horrors to come. Since that gruesome display of power and cowardice, there have been too many more. Ones I would surely miss if I stood to count them. Fathers, women, pillars of the community—a thirteen-year-old child. All gone, plucked from the ruthlessness of the society they left behind. I can only feel my stillness, and then I know it’s real.

In my inhale, I worry for the children who stand to bear witness to our inhumanity. We are failing them. Instead of picket fences, asphalt playgrounds, scraped knees, and popsicles in the summer, we have exposed them to violence against members of their communities. And they have seen that communal pain unleash worldwide fury and indignation. We have come to rely on the evidence gathered by schoolchildren to save the soul of a nation whose highest ideals have always been subsumed by the soulless, the heartless, the painful acts of our history—ideals dependent on being rooted in a soil of historical amnesia. We have muted their shrills of joy and replaced them with screams of defiance. No time to teach a sweet berceuse because the mantra of protest songs soothes better. We have left Dae’Anna, Erica, Gianna – the youngest of George’s five – Daunte Jr., and countless others, without a father. We have shown the mothers of fallen sons how devalued their kin have become, that they must be reminded to demand that others know their lives matter. We have murdered caregivers, guardians, and all chances at proper love.

With all that we have not done, what are the expectations now? Kindness? Hope that their soft touch on others – on us – might remain as gentle as wounded mourning doves? I bend to my knees, cradle my head upon my weary legs and pull my breath, holding the darkness in the pit of my stomach. Shifting among the pictures in my mind, I see wolves—rabid, enraged, so fearful they appear brave and aggressive, gripping, grappling at anyone that resembles a pack leader who might lead them…astray…might protect them.

Quietly, angrily, I watch as we stand in the middle of performed savagery. I peek from behind the tallest tree as I hear the gallops of the coming seven horses; they speed towards those who have broken their promise to us. I stand far from the foolish and find comfort near the learned, who understand among us there is not one left behind who won’t be broken-hearted. So we make our beds now in terror and lay awaiting justice in memoriam, as if somehow that makes up for the loss of life. We know man’s interpretation of justice brings no real satisfaction. The vulgar checks printed green over the blood, settlements for the unsettled, dollar bills to dry tears with. These are silencers, used, soiled bandages that don’t stick. They keep the wounds in place, they zip shut the loud, and they falsely embrace the sad, if even only temporarily so.

So, no, I cannot exhale. I sprawl awake at night and I think of the dying and the dead who call out to their mothers for help and know that no matter how hard we try, our sons and our daughters are being hunted. Do you know what it feels like to have your spirit broken time and time again? Do you know what it feels like to wake up sore after a street fight? When your bones hurt so badly you can count each one of them, one…two…three… and then you wince because the fourth one is shattered. Such is the aching of my soul. So deeply does the despair not far behind me run. So very occupied am I by the level of hate embodied in so many who have never been given a chance to love.

I hope that in time, I will be able to breathe alongside men, women, and children, also exhaling. Maybe after we’ve been rebooted, we’ll come to understand that breathing was always a right, and not a privilege reserved only for those who already have unlimited liberties. All of those hopes and maybes both timely and tentative. Nothing can be promised except the legacy of these assurances.

For now, my safety, the protection of my beloveds, all lie in my inhale.

Regina A. Bernard-Carreño, born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen, is a writer and Associate Professor of undergraduate Black and Latino Studies at the City University of New York. Alongside her teaching and community work, she’s made a film about Caribbean culture and feminism. She is currently at work on several creative projects.