Ode for Nex Benedict

Ode for Nex Benedict

(“He has done mighty deeds by his power. He has scattered the people who are proud and think great things about themselves.” Luke 1:51)

The teenager had a cat,
a pet with a name fit for Olympus. Cats
grow well in
Oklahoma.
Sometimes people do not.
They were a teenager walking through
ancestral ways, navigating high school hallways.
There was beauty in their handsome face,
there was grace in their chocolate eyes,
there was sadness in their beautiful soul.

How could anyone erase a life just beginning?
How could fists land on the body of one finding their way?
Why would anyone pound that weary head against a cold
bathroom floor?

How do you smile, you self-satisfied governor;
how do you sleep at all? A restroom was all they asked,
a place safe from the onslaught of peers,
a place their own to prep for art class or
US government.

One teacher, one ally, one friend who listened well.
One teacher speaking out for their uncertain path,
one teacher harassed for speaking on their behalf.
One teacher threatened and resigned. One teacher gone
who saw only a child of love.

While you argue over they/them, he/him, she/her,
compassion is lost in your arrogance.
They are a single syllable, uttered in one breath.
They can be the difference between life and death.

And so, they, Nex Benedict,
were battered in the bathroom where students
sometimes sneak a smoke before class.
And so, they, Nex Benedict,
were shattered with fists full of glass.
And so, we, somehow, must mourn in ways
that twist us bloody.
And so we must grieve until the last raging idiot
discovers the silence that lasts.

Today I am angry. Today do not call me.
Today it could have been my child. Today
my rage is uncontained.

Nex Benedict, a child worth loving,
we wish they had known you. We hate
the religion that berated you,
the bile that poisoned adults and translated your
humanity
into a mangled target of their certainty.

Holy Creator, may they, Nex Bendict, live long
in our memories to
help up become so much better than we

Have been.