There’s somethin’ ’bout you that I can’t place my finger on…and it’s botherin’ me real bad…like I should know you…but I don’t…seems like we go back a ways…maybe back to when we were kids in Arkansas…or was it Tennessee…back when the grass was all wet with dew and the November air was chilly…back to when we played football at recess and it was the blacks against the whites…did I know you then…did you used to intercept my passes that I threw down field just before the teacher blew her whistle….I think that was you…think so…

And I used to see you on the school bus sittin’ in the back…droppin’ you off in your neighborhood way on the Southside of town…there were cars put up on blocks in your front yard and a mean old dog tied to a tree…barkin’ it’s fool head off every time that bus turned the corner…you used to lift up a rusted old coffee can on the front porch and grab a key to unlock the front door…I always wondered if your mom was home…always…

You never saw where I lived did ya…not much different from where you stayed…just an old trailer park on the West side of town…pick up trucks with the windows cracked on em sat in driveways along with American flags and old Dixie flyin’ in the breeze…weren’t no coloreds in my neighborhood…just poor white trash tryin’ to make a livin’ somehow…guess just the same as you people were…workin’ at factories and garages…car wash places and grocery stores…fast food joints…moms and dads tryin’ to eek out a livin’…had mouths to feed…birds in a nest waitin’ to be fed…just waitin’…

Feel like I should know ya…but I can’t remember…can’t place ya…maybe you just remind me of someone…some kid I knew in grade school…somebody I used to play football with at recess…blacks vs. whites…