It was early July and, fully enraged, I stormed out of my tiny, rented studio apartment in the Montmartre district of Paris with no real destination. I was at my breaking point after watching the horrific video of Philando Castile, a black man who was shot by a police officer in Minnesota. His fiancée Diamond Reynolds live-streamed the gruesome aftermath as he lay dying in the seat beside her. My emotions were already intensified since the day before I had also watched the video of Alton Sterling, another black man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was shot and killed by police at point-blank range while selling CD’s outside of a convenience store. Philando and Alton, two more names added to a growing list of black men introduced to the world through the filthy lens of brutality, injustice and death. The physical reality of being thousands of miles away was daunting. However, with each angry step I took to nowhere on the foreign streets of Paris, my desire to get back to America grew. I even uttered out loud, “I want to go home…I need to go home.” Relieved that my flight was leaving the next morning, I wrestled with the irony of gripping tightly like a child to the pant leg of my own country who seemed to be trying violently to shake me loose.