This morning
at the close of Morning Prayer,
the bell tolled for Kenneth
and a little bit of me died
after a very long illness.

Kenneth was created in God’s image.
God loved Kenneth
but others did not.
He suffered abuse and neglect
at the hands of his mother’s
hard drinking
violent boyfriends.

That was forty years ago
when the scars
of Jim Crow
were fresher.

What they did to Kenneth
was horrible.
What Kenneth did to Cathy
was worse,
and what the juror said
only compounded it all.

We have not loved
our neighbors as ourselves.
We have failed to offer hope
to those that only find it in a bottle.
We have failed to protect
the children in their care.
We have failed to end
the scourge of racism,
and Cathy died
and now Kenneth dies,
and all of us
die a little bit too.