Where the Framework
Becomes Feeling

Dear Uncle Eli,

come have a seat, we need to talk, I still love you, but this has to stop.

Dear Uncle Eli.

I am a leader in the system you created. I live two blocks from your checkbook and my kids have seen war on their stoop.

I have been measuring with your tools and writing grant reports about it in the building where my grandfather's silence built you a reputation for kindness. If I can do it, anyone can. It really isn't hard to measure, after all. I've been watching my weight since I was 6 years old. There is actually no injection for shame; diet and exercise is a prescription like a doctor yelling at a Deaf person expecting them to hear.

Dear Uncle Eli.

Samuel Jefferson Brewer, my beloved Deaf grandfather of Vallonia Brewers, came to work with hands that knew things your ears never could. You gave him a wage and called it vision while the whole floor watched, mocked Deaf voice, and called it inclusion. He went home and called it survival. Survival is what we named love because nobody told us there was a 7. That isn't woo, it is math.

Dear Uncle Eli.

My father put people under for a living. A true gas passer, a pusher of sorts. He was a physician; you paid for his medical degree. Passing gas for a living is a literal trauma response. Taking over one's senses and getting paid well sounds quite chattel, not so much when they said "I need you to take over so I can get better", still then we must be careful. That MUST happen in order to dominate. Consent is not hyperbole. I have spent my whole life waking them back up. That is not irony. That is what a family does with the thing it cannot say out loud.

Dear Uncle Eli.

Prozac Nation, I found out, started in the newfields. Not as accusation. As diagnosis. You medicated the distance between 6 and 7 and called it treatment. We swallowed it because the alternative was feeling exactly how far we still had to go.

Dear Uncle Eli.

My kids have seen war on their stoop. A boy went home last night the wrong way two miles from your posthumous bank account that will fund the study that explains why and the gun makers won't be punished. They will hold their top sellers accountable and we will call that justice because we stopped at 6 and built a whole civilization there and painted the ceiling to look like sky. Just look at the suburbs around our city. Donuts of trauma. Roundabouts of shame. American suburbs are a shame response, america's shadows. Thank you for making me feel so much more comfortable, hidden.

Dear Uncle Eli.

I am sitting in the Stutz building this morning. Samuel Jefferson Brewer's grandson. Drinking coffee with a man whose whole body is the answer to the question you never asked. 6/7 is a trauma response. 6/7 is love. Jesus is a Black Woman and she has been standing at the threshold this whole time watching us mistake the door for the destination.

Dear Uncle Eli.

My other uncle, John, heard from Thomas Jefferson. He said no one can own healing; that is what Mother is for. He told me Jesus is a Black Woman. He said that if there were to be a rule book for America, it would first let us tell our story no matter — THEN let us protect our story from being dominated without our consent, no matter what. Like Love. The southern folk thought they owned Jesus, like she was their story. Boys will be boys, I guess. They brought a pistol to a kindergarten.

Mon Tonon Eli, mais bien sûr, Alexis de Tuck-n-run américain.

That dude talked about dominating without consent, without KNOWLEDGE. The habits of the heart were formed after hundreds of years of taking what wasn't ours to begin with. He told us we were his favorite people, while shaming us at the same time. Habits of the heart aren't the beating of the heart. The beats are habits and habits aren't the things that are really that good for us. He normalized those things and called them…virtue? Professional Dancers are the only true ones. They have kept the language of love, the language of understanding trauma,

A boy was found murdered in my neighborhood this morning, Uncle Eli. I need relief. Ms. Mari Evans told us that clarity is a concept, so I want to be crystal clear. We all do. We are doing it wrong. Love always goes to 7, when shame keeps us at 6. But people are afraid you will punish them, Uncle Eli. You always told me you wanted honesty. Honestly, Uncle Eli. We are doing it wrong. Not me and my family. Not the parents or the teachers. Not the republicans or the democrats. All of us.

Dear Uncle Eli,

I am not writing this for you. I am writing this for little Marc. For my son. For the boy who didn't make it home, before he grew up. For my grandfather's hands that knew the machine before the machine knew him. And for my grandmother's hands…the hands that gave me the language of love.

At the risk of losing everything, I beg & plead: Let's take it to 7.