How It Went Down

People make mistakes. They look at the surface of things and see what they want to.

As a black man, you have to keep your head down. You have to keep yourself steady. You have to follow every rule that's ever been written, plus a few that have always remained unspoken.

I'm really good with problems. I can solve a differential equation in my head. I chew through trig angles like candy. I know this, and it just makes it worse. Because I don't know how to solve this one.

I was leaning over him when he died. My hands on his chest. My palms felt his last breath move inside him. His chest rose and fell and then kept falling, like it could carry us both straight down through the earth. I didn't stop pushing, but I knew. Right then. I was breathing hard myself. My lungs probably took int he last air Tariq ever exhaled. It can't possibly be in me anymore, but it feels like it is. Like it's weighing heavy on my chest with every breath I take, even now.

They spin away, always away. Too fast to understand, sometimes. They rush on, but we remain. They will come back, and we will still be here, as they expect us to be. We are the guardians. In between each small flurry, we rest. We breathe. Redeema raises her face to the sky. "My children," she murmurs, and the sound of it aches.

I've never had a guy who's interested in the rest of me. One who likes to look into my eyes. To most guys, I'm just a round face, a double-E cup, and a pair of hippo hips.

Like I always tell Will: If you dress like a hood, you will get treated like a hood. If you want to get treated like a man, you have to dress like a man. Simple as that. It's how this world works. It stops being about the color of your skin after a while and starts being about how you comport yourself. Inside, too, but mostly out.