Love Like a Poppyseed
Renee Nicole Good was killed for trying to protect her neighbors
Cal and I had just boarded the train home from Chicago when I opened social media and fell into a timeline of video footage that showed an ICE agent shooting a woman inside her SUV on a residential street in Minneapolis.
In the hours and days since, we’ve learned more about the victim. Her name was Renee Nicole Good. She was not a “paid agitator,” but rather a 37 year old stay-at-home-mom. She was not rioting, but rather returning home after taking her youngest child to a nearby elementary school. She was not a “deranged leftist” as JD Vance publicly claimed, but a lauded poet.
She bled out next to a glove box crammed with stuffies. Her last recorded words to the man who shot her, seconds before she was murdered, were a smiling, “I’m not mad at you!”
That night, my DMs were flooded with “What do we do?” and “Where do we go from here?” and “When will this end?”
It can be strangely comforting to voice impossible questions. (Ask me how I know.) I welcomed the deluge and read each one with care. Tapping out broken and mending heart emojis was the only prayer I could manage, to the silent refrain of God help us.
I don’t have any simple answers.
But I do have a few tiny ones.
