8:46
I wonder
if their breath ever touched.
The cop who raged himself awake
and the man whose sorrows never
glinted like medals.
If the velocity of oxygen
wrapped its oppression around his neck
and clung to the whites of his eyes for
something familiar.
If this privilege of air
slipped foreign from one cavernous chest
to the other, ebony infused
and bigotry felt like a blanket
carrying him to his mama.