my mother says that I’m “too smart to protest” and other things to let me know she does not want me staring down tear gas or pepper spray, armed with nothing but the people around me. but if she could see the look on me and the other loudest person’s face when we find each other-

through a sea of off-beat praises. if she knew it was almost always a Black woman staring back at me who smiles just like her. stands in harms way with me, just like her. If she could see the way we bend our limbs between chantstomps. How the black tar splits apart like an ocean.

How we cry and shout and dance and pray and scream. I think she’d just be proud I finally found a church home.