Through My Cracked Screen
I still remember reading the reports from the screen of my cracked ipod touch, knowing the name Trayvon Martin was someone different. From that moment on I and countless other black people have held the bodies of those who look like us, victims of violence, in our hands, without laying a finger on their bodies. Our screens become portals to grief, as we process loss on a global scale. The devices we carry in our pockets, meant to connect us to the world, also disconnect us from the tangibility of real care. We view loss, we process grief, we mourn the fallen, all through our own black screens. The black body becomes an ephemeral placeholder for our history, martyrs, and community. A symbol forever attached to a movement, and all the politics that comes with it. A loss carried in pockets, and mourned through glass.