is to be honest about the order of things in a land of law. the tail don't wag the dog. the bullet don't go back into the gun. breadwinner is not to come before head of household only because they are one and the same. they share the shadow of duty in the mind of a disgrace.

let him tell it: rib maketh woman, man maketh himself. she would beg to differ if the earth could be unshoveled from her early grave.

mother of his children with the gall to leave. part escaping the whole. rank, it stinks. it rots and festers. but this is the order of things. he stole a life before he took his own. he ruined a life before wrecking his home. a man with many victims will be written down as a victor, a martyr, a troubled lone wolf. the women? imperfect prey who exposed their necks. collateral damage in his hero's journey away from redemption. fools for stating their desire to live in front of their executioners.

still, journalists scramble to provide resources for the suicidal. very few for the violated, and secondary if provided. as if a suicide-murder can exist. his chosen departure was more an indication of being poisoned by patriarchy, less one of personal struggle. you cannot plate someone death after you have swallowed it yourself, and now the press spoon-feeds the public distortions. the hyphen bridging murder and suicide is an admission of guilt, is an arrow that only points rightward. precedence, procession, possession.

there is an order to all of this. who does the victim call? whose legacy elicits urgency? who keeps their name before the title binding them to another? who parents the children orphaned by violent cowardice? how many more of my sisters and siblings will be led to slaughter?

i tire of the onslaught of consequences for the captive leaving before the captor decides it's time. i rage at how brotherhood often establishes its foundation on evasion; they keep nothing but quiet in the face of wrongdoing. i weep for the many who live on only in eulogy, who could not make it to the other side of the deadly window of time that opens with the decision to flee.

i pray we may one day unlight the candles, watch the wax defy gravity as it remolds itself, clambering back into wholeness under the careful hands of we who wait/wade in the wound of theft.

•

for Dr. Cerina Fairfax, Elajia Whitley, Davonta Curtis, Nancy Metayer, Shyyell Diamond Sanchez-McCray, Victoria Alexander, Raven Edwards, Ashanti Allen, Qualeshia Barnes, Ashlee Jenae Robinson, all the Black women, femmes, and gender-marginalized people (named and unnamed) who were taken from us by intimate partner violence.
for those who are actively enduring. may you soon know safety, peace, and support.
for those who escaped and are now rebuilding their lives in the wake of such cruelty.

all my love (cradled by a heavy heart),

Dkéama