For Mr. George Floyd
By Huma Sheikh

 

How easy for you to say eight minutes and forty-six seconds just isn’t enough.

Within the last three, my breath
awakened every third heartbeat and my eyes
beheld a mirror up to my life. 46 years.

Still, I count every second, waiting for a chance to cradle in Mama’s arms.

The Gatorade bought at the store lay sealed by my side.

It wasn’t too late for a swig from Mama’s pool of breath.

My daughter could have come with that same haste the blood
did, gargling to my throat,

or that breathing speed, that pacing in the room where my granddaughter,
double-bent,

knew what cops do when they pin her to the pavement.
Mama told her when she was learning to talk.

Yet upon a gasp of the color, a roar, she turned her small back toward the TV light,

falling, digging in the floor with her pointed toes,
fingers pulling back as if in some unimaginable dream

the noose, the knee around my neck.

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Huma Sheikh was born and raised in the war-torn region of Kashmir. She then came to the United States where she received multiple degrees at various universities in Asia Pacific Leadership, Creative Writing, English Literature, and Journalism and Communication Studies. She has studied at the East West Center (University of Hawaii), and taught writing and literature classes at Florida State University, University of South Dakota, Texas A&M University, and Long Island University (Brooklyn).

Sheikh’s currently pursuing her PhD at Florida State University. Her work has appeared in Consequence magazine, Arrowsmith Press, Solstice Literary Magazine, Commonline Journal, Cargo Literary Journal, LiveWire, Quint, The New Writers Series Anthology, Poetry from Texas, Downtown Brooklyn, Chicago Literati, Z Publishing New York, and Eber & Publishing and others.