The Leash

an essay about Tyre Nichols and us

I didn’t watch the video. I haven’t watched “the videos” in years. These days, a particular location, a stray detail, the look on a loved one’s face in a photograph of a press conference is enough to do it.

A rip at the mind’s seam. A wrinkle in the blood.

Because my body is mine, and I understand that possession’s worth, there is always the tension of America’s tug on it. An undeserving leash, really. Insulting as it sounds.

One does what one can to assert one’s body. To remind one’s body and one’s country of one’s worth. But then, one reads an arrangement of words like “in around 13 minutes, the cops had issued at least 71 demands before radioing that Tyre Nichols was in custody” and the tug threatens to become a strangle.

Nothing I write here will give Tyre Nichols back his body. Nothing you comment under these words or whisper to yourself while reading them will help his loved ones sleep better tonight. Our utterances won’t save the next Black person who, perhaps even at this very moment, sees red and blue lights poisoning the air around them.

But I write and you read, as I hope and you consider. Or vice versa. This way or that way. If not this time, then the next. We won’t have to wait long for another opportunity. Of that, I’m sure. And maybe this loop — knowledge to grief to outrage to exhaustion and back to knowledge — is the real leash.