An Empty Plate

on a holiday that celebrates the freedoms granted to white men, Robert Crimo fired a high-powered weapon into a parade.

Chapter 225

You were just sitting there, eating a salad, when you heard about another gunman or policeman or whatever shots were fired.

You are not a hysterical person, mostly, but very rarely do you feel nothing. Maybe it’s like semantic satiation and the words “mass shooting” and “murdered by police” collapse in on themselves the more that you hear them.

You remember when this kind of grouping happened another summer ago when the names were Jacob Blake and Kyle Rittenhouse.

Someone says that a black man, unarmed and confined to his car, moved suspiciously. As though 8 officers were necessary in the first place and only 90 rounds could subdue someone so shockingly black and male.

Someone says that a twenty-something white man with face tattoos looks more like a hippy than a Nazi. As though hate has a phenotype, other than being a white male whom neighbors describe as quiet and no one could have guessed he was capable, despite the videos and status updates and rallies and “off-color” comments and the guns he legally purchased.

You log off social media.

306 mass shootings are collected on a spreadsheet and 568 people have been killed by the police this year, so far.

You aren’t hungry anymore.