I walk to my home, the summer air is thick; surrounded by hallowed street lights and homes of made of brick

The streets I walk, normally awake with life, are empty and dull; not a cackle of laughter in my line of sight

I see lights of red and blue; when you saw those lights people knew

That someone was dead, or going to jail; yet few people knew the difference

I looked up and the lights went to my homeboy’s house; I looked down and my homeboy was on the ground

He was in his driveway, with his face buried in the ground; five bullet holes in his back with a crowd gathered round

I held out hope that’d he’d be ok maybe. But I knew it was over when his mama cried out “They killed by baby!”

They checked his body to see if he was strapped, but all he had was some candy in a plastic wrap

The cars drove away and the outrage began, my homeboy’s body was taken by a van

I stayed with his mama to help clean up his blood as the rain washed some of it away and made the gutters flood

No one walks there anymore, not even the Gs on the block; a memorial etched in blood; the Red Sidewalk