If I was in the car, on the way to the polls

And Medgar was next to me, I simply would have gone to get milkshakes instead.
We would have fought, most likely.
“How can you not see the importance of the Negro vote?”
How do you expect anything to change
Expect white folks to respect us
Expect us to protect ourselves
Without the power of the ballot, boy?

And across the median of the station wagon
In the dark, i would have found the grays of his eyes,
And kept driving.

You don’t hear me?
Or what, you’re one of those niggas too good to vote?
Too good to play by the rules?
Too good to fight with the oyster knife you inherited,
Grandmother’s monogram weathered into the wood?

And across the median of time
In the dark, I would have found the blacks of his lips
Curled into a smile only Black folks know how to read
And asked him what flavor milkshake he would like.

If I was in the car, on the way to the polls with Medgar Evers,
I would not have taken Medgar Evers to the polls and we would have gone out
For milkshakes. And curly fries. And burgers the size of a promise from Jack Kennedy.
He would have cursed me and my name, my traitorous skin
He would maybe even have spit at me as we sat at the segregated lunch counter
So I could feel what's hissed, then fomented by the powerful.

And between bites of burger, long, silent gulps of milkshake,
I would experience heartbreak. 
I cannot tell Medgar Evers that voting doesn’t matter.
I cannot tell Medgar Evers that he died in vain.
I cannot tell Medgar Evers that my glasses are a supercomputer,
And that with them, I know exactly what happens on our drive home from his polling place.
I cannot tell Medgar Evers, most of all, that voting adds a tangle,
A series of complications, a knot it twists into being able to clearly discern
Shit that is right from shit that is wrong.
I cannot tell Medgar Evers all of these things because while all of them are true
They are all also lies.

So I reach across the table and press on, through his jerked movements
To clasp his clenched, rough fists.
I feel the scars he’s donned himself, and those that he has courageously born for strangers.
I grip Medgar’s hands tightly, and realize that ultimately I cannot bring myself to say anything at all.
The cosplay, the fantasy, the dream state that we create—
The best of us wanting to rewrite our trauma out of the revolutions of the earth,
The worst of us proclaiming that we are not our ancestors, that I am not Medgar—
Is a mirage born from naivete. And the thing about mirages is that up close, all there is
Is dry and brittle sand.
So I say nothing as I feel it cake my gums and spill down my throat.

Ultimately, I find the courage:
“Medgar, why don’t we pick up some burgers and fries for the kids?
I’m sure they’d love to eat with their daddy when he gets home.”