(finalist for the 2022 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest)
I know, I said I was done
imagining false futures
but it’s a beautiful day today
and I have to wonder
how you’d have spent it,
though maybe you’d have done nothing at all
except turn eighteen
because maybe you weren’t big
on birthdays. I’m not either,
though I guess there is something
about birthdays for black boys
something joyous to be taken from them
for all that they defy. I’m not sure anymore
how far joy gets us
but happy birthday all the same,
Tamir. What’s left to hope
I will hope for you.
What I can’t defy I will destroy.
