Forty blackbirds line a wire
Facing the police headquarters.
They watch the black suspect walk inside in cuffs.
He tells the black detective that he's never seen the black man in the photo,
The black vic who got capped.
He denies shooting the vic in his car.
He denies being on the scene.
But there is video evidence,
And so the officers take him
Still in cuffs, back to the black and white car
And put him in the back seat,
And just as the door clicks solidly shut,
The blackbirds fly away.

And on the other side of town,
The same exact thing is happening,
Except with a white detective, a white perpetrator, and a white victim.
But the birds in the wire are not white, but gray.

Separate, and almost equal.

-jenn