— By Nyrie Benton

(re-published) March 13th, 2024

Change into your shoes and walk outside. 

Start down the alley and say goodbye to your friends

whose bodies stand, as yours, Black and young, 

each of you heading to the corners of your worlds. 

Pass the corner store you are not allowed to go to, 

because not many customers survive the checkout. 

Turn left down Livingston Road. 

Cut through the park where your lips touched those 

of a boy that became an angel. 

Circle the roundabouts the county put there for aesthetics.

It is hard to see them coming when they make you dizzy. 

Follow the sound of the football game, 

where the cheerleaders are louder than the game itself.

They will scream from bodies like yours to let you know that they have been here. 

Hold your breath past the cars of cops who have never held an address in your neighborhood.

Ignore them when they acknowledge you. 

Up ahead is the ice cream shack. 

You have saved 16 quarters for vanilla cones for you and your brother.

Cross the street and hurry home before they melt. 

Mama’s already hollering about your spoiled dinner 

so call to your brother’s window, 

have him meet you on the front steps 

where you will eat them in secret before she sees. 

Nyrie Benton is a writer, photographer, plant mama and cheese connoisseur based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in publications such as Lumxn and in Root Work’s special issue Summoning Flight: Navigating Black Mythology, Flight, and Acts of Refusal. She has performed and displayed her work in shows, workshops, demonstrations and as part of community efforts throughout the country. When she is not clumsily wandering through new cities, she devotes her time to exploring storytelling through an array of written and visual arts. Last spring, Benton was named a Brooklyn Poets Fellow for study in Starr Davis’s “Writing Convictions” workshop.