On April 25, Writers in Baltimore Schools held a write-in for its members to respond to the death of Freddie Gray and the Baltimore Uprising five years later. All this week, the Beat is running the poems, essays, and reflections that came out of the write-in…

Another black butterfly,

Fluttering by,

Was stripped of its beautiful wings.

Pursued, and the subdued

By greedy butterfly catchers in blue.

But like an ignorant child, lacking in grace,

They killed the butterfly in their embrace.

To save face,

They demonize the butterfly’s nature

“If he wasn’t guilty, why was he running?”

Your Straw Men don’t fool us,

It matters not why the butterfly flutters away

But to humor you, we do know the answer.

When a butterfly is caught in a net

By catchers that are malicious and incompetent,

Tragedy is sure to ensue

And another black butterfly is pinned to the wall.