The Dream is Just a Weekend

Here it comes.

You’re like a toothache that can only be soothed from the fruits borne on the third Monday in January.

Everyone awaits your arrival like a child waiting for the sun to break through the darkened night signifying Christmas day has finally arrived.

As soon as the “New Year” wave passes, people plan for your arrival.

Calls are made, texts are sent, flights are arranged and hotels are booked all because of you.

Planning for your arrival is like rewiring a hot car to go faster. - all the buzz and excitement caused by and for you.

But, don’t get excited just yet, Dr. King.

Most people are excited about what you mean not necessarily what you meant.

Correction -

everyone is excited about what you symbolize in regards to this day but could care less about what you went through to make this day.

And here it is.

All that planning for you is finally in effect.

All that planning for an extra-long weekend.

All of your life achievements, your struggles, your speeches, your marches are measured into a day celebrated for the excused absence from work, school, and other obligations.

Not a call was placed to arrange a festival memorializing you.

Not a single text sent with the location of a parade showing your life’s achievements.

No Dr. King, this day is not here for us to bask in your victories no matter how small.

This day is not here to binge your televised speeches.

This day is not here to congregate and peacefully march in your honor.

This day is not here to glorify you for twenty-four hours.

This day is here to proclaim those things while everyone enjoys the extended weekend with no mention of you other than as a reason for an absence from school or work.

Your thirty-nine years of non-violent activism has been suppressed into a mere non-celebratory twenty-four hours.

And there it goes.

Your life’s work disintegrated into a long weekend.

A long weekend that has now come and gone.

Those twenty-four hours were like a free campaign advocating that non-violent demands come at an expense.

An expense that was unaffordable for us but afforded to us.

It’s expenses like these that keep graveyard grasses green from the tears from our community.

It’s expenses like these that mentally and physically shackle potential civil rights activists fearing for the fragility of their lives.

It’s expenses like these that are most profitable.

So, unfortunately, your life has been deflated into a twenty-four-hour day that extends the weekend as well as being a day filled with fading memories of your dying dreams.

You, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., won’t necessarily be forgotten.

You’ll have your chance to be appreciated in February.

That time it’ll last twenty-eight days.

Twenty-nine if we’re lucky.

At least it's more than the twenty-four hours or the three day weekend we have now.

But for this day, for these twenty-four hours that we plan for, relax through and watch leave, are like you Dr. King - a dream deferred.

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