Ghost Boys

Lauren is a 22 year old poet and mechanical engineer from Cincinnati Ohio. She attends Vanderbilt University, and relies on poetry when elections, church shootings, and police brutality leaves her speechless.

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there’s a room outside heaven where black boys go to cry

they enter single file

lowering hoods & hands at the door

there is standing room only

there are wide eyes only

slowly, they introduce themselves with first day of school jitters

they compliment each other’s Nikes & mixtapes

every laugh and

nah bro, i’m just trynna get like you

is absorbed by the walls

one boy asks

about the bullet holes in everyone’s back

they realize it all at once

they are missing their own funerals

their jaws unhinge to match their open caskets

and hollow moans escape their throats

a new gunshot echoes

as a mother replays her son’s body-cam footage

it deafens them

a ghost boy screams the word

unfair in his sister’s voice, while another

collapses under the weight of his father’s sigh

it takes them days to grieve like this

to cry like this

each time the phrase too young is muttered

two spirits merge —

they exhaust themselves.

⌿