Thank you to everyone that has supported us during this difficult time. Thank you to the protesters risking their bodies and health. Thank you to the medical professionals who are healing bodies or granting them peace. Thanks dad.

Glossary

funnel: the term, interchangeable with correspondence variable, Emmeret Ko uses for the letters. The specific sequencing of words when read in their entirety comprise magnitudes of additional data that funnels into a prepared mind for assimilation.

Desmond’s Letter

John Lewis died yesterday. What an odd thing to have happened. I say odd because it’s insulation I think against the pain. He was arrested more than 40 times, beaten almost to death, outlived King, his friend, and saw the first Black president swear an oath to the Constitution on King’s worn travel bible on the day we celebrate his birth. And underneath that Bible, was Lincoln’s. He was more than a witness to history; he was an author of it. He was there when the Voting Rights Act was passed and also there to see it gutted. He marched for his life and saw the world march in solidarity in what would be his final summer, for all of the things he had dedicated his life too. I wonder, deep down, if he was joyous to see how far we had come or saddened to see how little had changed. People are never just anyone thing, so I’m sure it was a combination of both, but in what proportion? I can’t imagine. C.T. Vivian, another civil rights leader and the greatest preacher ever to preach, according to King, also died yesterday. Dr. King believed in heaven and if there is such a thing, I hope their reunion was full of charming half lies and full funny truths. The Fourth of July was a couple of weeks ago and, like so many things this year, it was just so strange. The president held two speeches. One at Mt. Rushmore, a place he expects to add his profile at some point in the future. I wish you could reach back and tell me if that has happened, but I imagine his aspiration will fizzle along with the other walls or towers he has failed to construct. He compared the democratic party to Nazis, at the White House, on the Fourth of July. It’s a common refrain these days but I was shocked and in no way surprised. He barely mentioned the virus but scientists from around the world are petitioning the World Health Organization to amend their findings on whether it is airborne, as the science suggests, but the WHO stubbornly refuses to state conclusively. The New York Times sued the CDC for demographic information regarding infection and death rates. It found that Blacks and Latinos, across all environments and age groups, are three times as likely to contract the virus and twice as likely to die from it. According to reports the president is trying to make sure that money for testing and contact tracing dries up so that the numbers won’t continue to increase in the press, as if that’s a thing, while continuing to suggest that’s it’s all going to just disappear. The protests, and the abuse, continue. Three cops were fired for re-enacting the death of Elijah McClain. There’s a hearing on Monday for a girl from Michigan, they call her Grace, but that isn’t her real name. She was sent to prison back in May by a judge for not finishing online assignments. There is a Strike for Black Lives event scheduled the same day. Thousands and thousands walking out on the job all across the country to demand corporations back up their support of black people in more than just slogans, tweets, and superficial performative activism. There has also been some encouraging news. Justice Ginsburg’s cancer has returned but she says she’s fully able to remain on the court despite the chemotherapy. The Pentagon has banned the Confederate flag on all U.S. bases, despite the president’s objections, and all the charges against a group of protesters who congregated in front of the Louisville D.A.’s home, calling for a real investigation and justice for Breonna Taylor, were dropped by the prosecutor. But there is something that happened recently that I really want you to know about. It’s called the Wall of Moms. In Portland, there are vans of unidentified federal officers kidnapping protesters. They just pull up, jump out of a vehicle, restrain someone, and flee the scene. They don’t arrest them or read them their rights or charge them with anything. A news organization came across an internal memo from Customs and Border Protection that said these agents would be deployed in perpetuity and in secret. So, a group of mothers, many of whom are vulnerable to the virus, have positioned themselves along the perimeters of demonstrating peaceful protesters to help keep them safe. They are putting themselves in harm’s way to protect their children and the children of others. I want you to remember this because this is my last letter to you boys. Before they come and take you away from me, I am going to make sure that you are taken care of. There is a policy in my name wherein the two of you and Harrison and Randi are the only beneficiaries. If the insurance company saw this, they would deny your claim, so I’ve hidden it in this time capsule so that by the time you read this, the money will have been paid out, and you four won’t have to ever worry about money. Just make sure you don’t share this with anyone other than yourselves, so they don’t come after it. I know I’m taking a risk by writing this down, but I couldn’t accept the idea that I would disappear from your lives and you would always have questions. I don’t want any part of your memory of me to be a puzzle you need to solve. The only other person I’ve told is Eve. I shouldn’t have, but I love her and was too selfish to die without her knowing just how much. You are both with her now, as I write this. When the time comes, and you want to know all there is to know about me, she’s who you should go to. You two said goodbye to Randi yesterday. I took her to this Institute that is willing to pay a stipend to tutor her. The administrator there has determined from some tests she took last year that she is extremely gifted, and they’ve given her a scholarship. I’ve mentioned him before. He’s so different from anyone I’ve ever met he doesn’t seem real, like a shadow you can’t hide from who is pretending to be a person but can see right through you. I’ve never let him come around when you two were here since that first day, but he just seems to show up when I think of him, answering questions I haven’t asked. It was Randi who convinced me. She said she wanted to go with him, that he had a lot to teach her. I didn’t trust it at first. I was worried that maybe he’d been in contact with her somehow and had coerced for some other reasons. But she looked at me and all of a sudden, she was so much older, so confident. She told me that she loved me and that I had nothing to worry about and thanked me for loving her. She told me not to feel hurt that she wanted to go, that it wasn’t because I wasn’t family, but because she knew that her education would help us all one day. Her certainty reminded me of him. The foster agency said they would monitor him over the coming months and his background checked out. You were sad but not as sad as I expected. I hope that as you are reading this the four of you are all together, maybe with your own families, hopefully not judging me too harshly. If you see this as weakness, that’s okay. I love you. If you see this as strength, that’s very generous, and I love you. I was present in every moment I spent with you and wouldn’t trade any of them. What happened is boringly simple. I realized that I am better to you, can offer you more, dead than alive. I’m not scared, but I’m sorry I didn’t figure out a way to be both. Provide for you in the way you deserve while loving you. I like to drive, and when they find me, know that your father was thinking of you and all the moonlit skies teeming with stars, that are your celestial birthright, my princes. My boys.

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