Regardless…

To ask one’s children to wait for him

To mediate a domestic quarrel of two women

To attempt explanation to police

To walk

To reach the driver’s door of his SUV

To start to say to the children, “It’s okay…”

To have seven shot into the back of unarmed black man point-blank

To awaken in ICU

To have one’s kidney and liver penetrated by bullets

To have his colon and intestines removed

To have suffered an additional arm wound

And to be paralyzed from the waist down

Perhaps temporary

Perhaps permanent

Too early to know

To be black and treated inhumanely by police

Begs the quest for humanness

Regardless…

There seems to be endless perpetuation

Of sadness in our species sorrowful attempt to be human