In the white newspapers, they use it against us. They make the Panthers look like we all just want to rip the throats out of some white folks for no good reason. We have good reasons, but we still don’t want to do that.

My shoes dangle from my fingertips because, all things considered, barefoot is better.

I glance through the rear window at the house. It amazes me slightly that it looks the same as it did, though it’s been gutted of so many valuable things. You wouldn’t know, to walk past that house, what it had lost. It looks as proud, and as firm, and as fancy as ever. As whole.

It seemed like a backward step at first, but now I know going back was the only way to show how far I’ve come.

My moves are smooth. Always have been. I’m smart enough to see what’s coming, and clever enough to turn it my way. All my skills make me perfect for this. The street dance. The hustle.

I’ve never had a guy who’s interested in the rest of me. One who likes to look into my eyes. To most guys, I’m just a round face, a double-E cup, and a pair of hippo hips.

I wish she would just look at me, look at my face and stop talking long enough to see me. To see that things are not right. That none of this is real and I am in some other place.

I have to make peace, somehow, with my place in all of this. Peach Street is still my home; I can’t keep thinking of it as a war zone, or a protest platform, or a deathbed. Put one foot in front of the other, go to work. Read the news, sprinkle liberally with salt. Ring up. Make change. Smile. Chitchat.

I’m really good with problems. I can solve a differential equation in my head. I chew through trig angles like candy. I know this, and it just makes it worse. Because I don’t know how to solve this one.

As a black man, you have to keep your head down. You have to keep yourself steady. You have to follow every rule that’s ever been written, plus a few that have always remained unspoken.