My Soul is Seized in a Frigid Embrace
Joseph Rivera
At the tender age of fourteen, children are not often engulfed in the shadow of death, but I was. Though the danger I faced was not tangible nor immediate, I knew that it was always looming, patiently waiting to snatch me from this plain. My juvenile mind became aware of this shadow when I was exposed to the horrors of reality. When I saw the world for what it truly was; a cold and unforgiving place. This was when I became aware of my mortality.
My story begins in May of 2020. I had recently heard about the murder of another unarmed Black man and while it was saddening, I was not distraught. From a young age, I had always been acutely aware that America’s history was stained in the blood of innocents; that the nation of my birth would rather see me dead than see me succeed. This was not new. America had maliciously targeted its black youth since the days of the country’s inception. Unfortunately, this constant awareness had desensitized me to the horrific acts I witnessed. Though sadness and anger bubbled within me, the event felt detached from my reality.
For the next couple of days, I went through the motions, trying to end my freshman year of high school in the best way possible. I never truly confronted what occurred until an enlightening conversation I had with my elder sister. The atrocity had devastated her and due to our six-year age gap, I failed to see why it hit so close to home. Our conversation centered around our feelings about everything that had occurred and I expressed how I wished to attend a local protest that had been scheduled for later in the day. Though she agreed with me, she was adamant about not letting me go with her. When I pressed her on telling me why she said something that shook me to my core. Referring to the horrific way that countless others had been killed, she said, “That could have been you”.
All it took was five words. Five words to illuminate the world. Five words to shift the tectonic plates of my mind. Five words that have followed me since that day, a heavy burden upon weary shoulders. This was the moment when I gazed into the mirror and saw the shadow hovering over me. When I understood that an early death because of something I had no control over, was a likely outcome.