the murder of renee nicole good
minnesota is cold
the kind of cold that crawls into your bones
and makes even the brave shake.
renee nicole good
sat in her car
with the heater humming
and a half-empty coffee going bitter in the cup holder.
she was thinking about getting home,
about nothing heroic,
nothing dangerous,
just living another ordinary night.
that’s when the lights came.
blue and red like cheap fireworks.
authority screaming through a loudspeaker
like god had picked up a badge.
they say comply.
they always say comply.
as if fear ever listens.
as if panic ever reads instructions.
glass exploded.
metal roared.
lead made its mortal argument.
the bullet didn’t care about her name.
didn’t care about her plans.
didn’t care that she wasn’t a threat,
wasn’t armed,
wasn’t anything but human.
the car turned into a cage.
the seat into a grave.
the road into a crime scene nobody wanted to remember.
somewhere a man wiped his gun clean,
filled out forms,
used words like protocol and procedure
to clean her blood off his conscience.
renee stayed behind,
three neat round holes in her head.
her brains and blood,
cooling underneath the high streetlights,
while the snow came down like a final apology.
like elvis presislys final curtain
from a world that never meant to protect her.
and tomorrow
they’ll say it was complicated.
they’ll say it was necessary.
they’ll say it was tragic.
but renee is still dead.
and dead people don’t care
what you call it.
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