Response

After the harmless black boy was murdered, the mayor relieved all police of nighttime shifts, hiring adjunct professors from the community college. Domestic disputes paralyzed them: She should release that knife. But he threatened her autonomy. Have you worked 12-hour shifts? Have you read existential feminist theory? The dismissed officers created a flag football league, and after games they drank. One night, they broke into a library: Seuss, Sendak, Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. They devoured lines, stanzas, chapters, discarding pages like droppings until dawn, when they shattered windows with papercut hands and discovered: indistinguishable—beauty, danger, sunlight.