Rosewood Tracy

Last night I heard the screams. It was just another sleepless night for me, I figured it wouldn’t do any good to call the police. They always come late, if they even come at all. I found myself sleepless, lying in bed thinking about the day. I recalled the two elderly men, who had me questioning their conversation all day, playing chess in the park. I couldn’t help but to hear what they were talking about as it bellowed throughout the park.
I heard,” Poor people are gonna rise and take what is theirs.” he yelled to his friend. I suppose he couldn’t understand his own volume, “the tables are starting to turn. They are wasting time standing in the unemployment line. All of them better run. The tables are starting to turn, better stop sitting around and just waiting around for a promotion.” The other, with a terribly long drawn out southern accent, kept asking,” who would cross them lines? Who would choose sides? I remember the night the riots began, they killed the dreams of America. That little black girl got assaulted, and nobody knew her name but before too long, everybody knew her name ‘cause she was the one being blamed. Two black boys got killed and a white boy goes blind, right there on the back streets of America.”
I thought about what all that meant or if it even meant anything at all. I thought the southern mans accent and suspected he was from the south referring to racism, and the northern man talking about welfare and the poor. Being a middle aged white woman bought up and raised in the slums of Rochester New York, I hadn’t experienced racism, but I knew a thing or two about being less privileged. I pondered on their thoughts and dreamed of what life would be like f I didn’t have to work for someone else until I was in my grave.
I wondered what it would feel like to have mountains of things instead of dreaming of them. “I know