This Burden/This Strength (for Ahmaud)
by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher

1.
My sisters and I bear a strange burden:
we anticipate, we push back this ghost of fear,
we take in the story of the latest one and we steel ourselves—
we manage the threat of a silent war.
Even those who don’t believe find themselves offering supplication
to the Most High
to cover their sons and brothers fathers and uncles—
cover my grandfather and husband, they pray.
That they would not be hunted down like dogs and killed,
that they would not end up martyrs because of the fears of small men.