Crying at work

The sharp, high ring of a cell phone cut through all of the background noise and I picked up the phone. It was not my mine, nor was it my ear to which I held the phone, but my co workers hands were full, rendering them useless. When the call was complete, I pressed end, and that's when I saw it. The background of her phone was cherry red with two thick streaks of blue, outlined in white, crossing diagonally through the middle. The confederate flag. And then I began to cry. My eyes welled up with tears which eventually spilled down my cheeks and I blinked to clear away the cloudy vision. But I was not crying for racial injustice. I was not crying for the lives of young, innocent boys lost to the prejudice of the nation. I was not crying for police brutality, inequality in the eyes of the law, and the perpetual fight to prove that black lives indeed matter as much as any other. I was not even crying for the parents, who heard the knock on their front door, sharp and cold, who didn't know what to except for so late an hour, who opened the door and were greeted by somber faces and a soft voice telling them what had happened, the life of their child, the light of their life, their pride and joy, is over, never to return. Flashing back through the years, the hours spent soothing the beautiful baby, teaching the toddler not to cry, watching him grow and learn, knowing that this child is, was, everything, and discovering that this didn't matter. Not enough to keep him alive, not enough for he who took this life to be blamed. No, my tears were not for the parents, for the future children who must learn to deal with bigotry in order to keep their lives, or for a past of oppression and abuse,

but because I was chopping onions.