One too many

One too many

One too many nights under pale, flickering streetlights,
the cold wind carries the whispers of names.
Names that were stolen, names that were silenced,
their lives ripped away without trial, without reason.

One too many nights that end with sirens,
the flash of blue and red,
the weight of boots on concrete.
We’ve heard the cries. We’ve felt the pain.
But they’ve kept counting—
one name, then another, then another.

One too many: Trayvon Martin.
Seventeen years old. A hood, a look, a heartbeat.
He should have grown into the man he was meant to be.
Instead, his name was added to the list.

One too many: Michael Brown.
Hands up, don’t shoot.
But the gunshot came anyway.
Ferguson streets burned with the weight of history,
the weight of why?
Why a young Black man with dreams becomes a hashtag
instead of a father, a teacher, a son.

One too many: George Floyd.
I can hear his voice still.

“I can’t breathe.”
The weight of a knee on his neck,
eight minutes and forty-six seconds of a world watching,
but doing nothing.
“He was a criminal.”

And yet why should the ignorant folks speak?
Focus up. The names keep coming.
Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice,
Sandra Bland, Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile.
They all felt the cold hands of injustice,
the same cold hands we know too well,
hands of systems built on oppression.

One too many moments. This isn’t new.
It’s written into the fabric of America,
in the chains, in the lynchings,
in the fires lit to destroy freedom dreams.

One too many: Emmett Till.
Fourteen years old.
Beaten, dragged, his body discarded like a broken toy
after being accused of a crime that never existed.

One too many broken promises.
The promise of freedom, the promise of justice,
the promise of equality.
All words that fade when weighed against centuries
of oppression, history written by the hands
of slave owners and colonizers.

One too many marches.
Selma, 1965.
The bridge, the beatings, the blood.
The cries of freedom ringing louder than the boots
that met protesters on that bridge.
How many were beaten down for a single step toward equality?

But here’s the thing.
These aren’t just history lessons.
They are our families, our lives,
our ancestors buried beneath the shadows of systemic hate.
They are mothers, fathers, children,
fighting to breathe under the weight of chains
that refuse to rust, refuse to die.

One too many names.
One too many injustices.
One too many nights that ended in mourning.
And still, they expect us to be silent.

But silence is not survival anymore.
Our voices rise.
They carry the weight of generations.
They carry the weight of lives stolen, histories erased, promises broken.

One too many.

How many bodies are enough?
How many cries will it take before this stops?

And yet, we are here.
We are still here.
We remember. We stand.

But here’s the ache—
I can’t help but wonder if they hear us.
If the names that we cry out reach the heavens.
If they hear our pain, our demands,
or if they, too, are lost in the same echo.

We are not just angry; we are tired.
Tired of fighting battles that should have ended decades ago.
Tired of watching the clock as if time will bend itself
to make our lives less fragile, less expendable.

But here’s what we’ll do:
we’ll cry louder.
We’ll cry until the earth shakes and the stars can hear.
We’ll cry until the echoes fall into the hearts of the ones who need to hear.

Because even if they try to silence us,
we will not go away.

Our voices will be heard.
Our stories will live.
And when the wind blows through the trees,
it’ll carry their names.

Into the marrow of history.
Into the bones of the earth.
Into the whispers of time itself.

Always.