You yell as loud as anyone
at the protest
your cardboard sign clenched
in your little hands
high as you can stretch
as a quilt sewn with thousands
of raised fists
rolls like the sea
in front of us.
You see a classmate
in the parking lot
as we leave
and you are quiet at first
as the tentacles of your mind
wrap around him
gently placing him in a new slot
like a library book
that you realized
had been on the wrong shelf.
We go for pizza
on our way home.
You ask me
don’t I feel happy now
that everyone wants racism to be over.
I explain that there is still
so much work to be done
even in our own hearts.
You are quiet
as I shuffle my thoughts
trying to carve the right words
into the tip of this moment.
I can’t make the hope go away
you declare
with resignation
as though you have done
something wrong.
So I hug you
because it buys me time
to realize what I really want to say,
which is
let that garden of hope take root
let those wild weeds
take over the world.