There is no justice. There is no peace. There is enduring rage. There is familiar stench of dead Black bodies—beautiful Black bodies that have been snatched. Irony: white bodies with badges still walking after kill dead Black bodies. Rewarded. There is no peace in this.

People love to talk about peace. How do you expect us to be peaceful when peace means accepting the crucifixion of our Black bodies, the freedom of white bodies with badges, and the comfort of other bodies who don’t give a damn. That ain’t peace, nor safety, that is Hell.

My momma used to pray for my safety, the safety of my sister and brothers, and other bodies like ours. Begging God to keep us protecting. Anointing our Black heads with the olive oil she got from Walmart. I learned that was where she dealt with fear: on her ashy knees.

Prayer was one of her last defense in a world she knew didn’t care about her body, our bodies, our prayers, and definitely not about our protection. There was no covering. No oil, just exposure. Deadly exposure. Our souls was covered but our bodies wasn’t saved.

She was not at peace when Mr. Nelson told her and her baby boy to their face, “your son has a propensity to trouble.” She was not at peace when white bodies with badges violated her son’s muscular, athletic, chiseled Black body. She wasn’t when a white man shot at us. No peace.

She wasn’t at peace when she got that call that there had been a wrongful warrant for her baby boy’s body in a place neither of them knew. She wasn’t at peace when she saw all these other beautiful Black bodies being terrorized, breath exiting their bodies in their last exhale.

There was no peace. She had prayer, but there was no peace. I thought she was tripping until I was forcefully awaken out of my white dream—forced to see that for others, the space between my body and theirs was not like my momma. It was not sacred, it was dangerous.

Then I have a son. He curls in my arms, saying, “Daddy, daddy.” He doesn’t know how angry I am, his momma is. He doesn’t know how much pain I am in. He doesn’t know that I will burn down everything if it happened to him. All he sees is a body like his, familiar, soft, home.

He knows that I love him. I let him go outside, run around, play and be free. Then after the long day is over, I wash his body, lay him down. I return an hour later, hands saturated in oil. I put my hand on his curly hair. I pray cause I know, there ain’t no justice, no peace.

One day he will have an encounter with white bodies with badges and bullets, Bibles and books, all types of sophisticated ways of trying to make him believe he and others are “niggers”. And he will have to face them, like I have, like my momma, her mama, and he will have to live.