Derrion Albert & Coffins That Should Never Have Been Built

I stood over a coffin that should never have been built. 

Motionless. 

Looking at a motionless body. 

A body of a sixteen-year-old kid. 

A kid half my age. 

Exactly half my age. 

A kid who had been hit over the head with a 2x4 and knocked out.  Knocked out so badly that his body became motionless.  The motion of the camera phone that captured his motionless body was not motionless.  It captured a moment of the history of the people of the United States Of America that exposed our deepest, most painful wounds. 

We watched with horror the anger, rage, desperation, sadness and violence eluded by a group of our most precious valuables, our young people.  We watched.  We stood there watching.  We couldn’t move while we watched, so we kept watching.  We didn’t want to watch, but we didn’t want Derrion Albert to die, so we kept watching.  And when his body became motionless, so did ours’.