Bots From Russia

It must be bots,

because, of course,

your streets can’t be squalid,

dripping with poison.

Reality doesn’t run side by side with your fantasy,

so you manifest new antagonists,

to avoid the fact you have been staring at the real culprits all along.

It must be bots,

bad news from Russia,

spilling monkey emojis into comment sections,

and black blood into the streets.

Eyes closed as sirens scream down the streets,

seeing conspiracies everywhere that you go,

so you don’t have to accept that your quiet runbles have ever been enough to drown out the slurs.

It’s just bots.

That’s what you tell yourself,

while a young man staggers to his mother’s door,

bathed in blood,

broken in spirit, with broken bones,

and the mark of the mauling men that you pretend don’t prowl your streets.

It must be just bots,

because to admit that his skin is bruised because he’s black is an attack on your fantasy,

and we can’t have that, now, can we?