I open the paper and it greets me
like a motel sign buzzing in the rain:
Democracy Dies in Darkness.
Which is funny because
we’re not in darkness.
We’re in 4K.
We’re in slow motion.
We’re in frame-by-frame.
We’re in Minneapolis,
snowbanked and holy,
and a woman sits in her Honda Pilot
on Portland Avenue
like the street itself is the punchline.
They call her Renee Good.
They call her 37.
They call her a poet and a mom and a daughter
and then, depending on which microphone is nearest,
they call her “domestic terrorism.”
It’s America’s favorite game show:
NAME THAT DEAD WOMAN.
Is she a neighbor
or a headline?
Is she a person
or a warning label?
She’s there to be a legal observer—
legal—
as if “legal” is a vest you can wear
that stops bullets.
And then the part we all know by now,
the part that gets replayed
until your brain starts to believe
the gunshot is just another notification:
Conflicting commands.
Hands on the door handle.
A vehicle that moves—
then veers—
and the shots come from the side,
and the story arrives already dressed,
already ironed,
already saying: perfectly lawful.
“Perfectly lawful” is such a clean phrase.
Like a disinfectant wipe.
Like you can scrub away a life
and the rag stays white.
Then the investigation happens,
which now means:
the state stands outside the room
while the feds lock the door
and tell everyone to trust the process.
And I’m still staring at the street name—
Portland Avenue—
when the country decides
it wants a sequel.
Because the next headline is Portland again,
only this time it’s Portland, Oregon,
and federal agents shoot two people
in the afternoon like it’s a schedule
and somebody’s got to keep the tour moving.
At first they won’t say which agency,
just “federal,”
that magic word that means
don’t ask too many questions.
Later, Portland police and the FBI say
it was a Customs and Border Protection agent.
Two people go to the hospital.
Conditions unknown.
And the mayor puts it in plain English,
the kind of sentence you say
when you’re watching the country slide:
“We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts.”
“Democracy dies in darkness,”
the paper keeps chanting,
but I’m watching it die in daylight,
in snowlight,
in streetlight,
in that pale fluorescent government light
that makes everything look procedural.
Two Portlands in two days.
Portland Avenue. Portland, Oregon.
Like the map is trying to tell us something
and we keep pretending it’s coincidence.
I want to believe in the old American bedtime story
where law is a fence
and power stays inside it.
But the new story is slicker:
Law isn’t a fence.
It’s a receipt.
It’s what you print out afterward
to prove you were allowed
to do what you already did.
And somewhere a candle is lit
in the snow,
and somewhere else a police statement is drafted
in air-conditioned calm,
and somewhere else an officer goes home
to spend time with his family,
and somewhere else a family learns
that in America you can be a poet
and still get translated into a threat.
So yes,
America legalizes murder.
Not all at once.
Not with a vote.
With a phrase.
With a shrug.
With a headline that becomes a habit.
And the paper’s motto keeps glowing
like a neon cross above the whole mess:
Democracy Dies in Darkness.
Buddy,
we’re not in darkness.
We’re just getting used to it.
