For Alex Pretti: January 24, 2026

The stench of acrid smoke rises and spreads.

Men cloaked in masks, ski hats, gloves and guns, heat of their anger a contrast to cold whiteness of snow, fog of breath, snap and clatter, pushing and shoving, the caw and screech of madmen.

My heart startles—a legal observer for years—I see the one filming who was pushed by madmen and fell as I might have in those years before knees ached and stamina failed, and yet one man rose to help her. It could’ve been me he reached for, shoved down for filming, his hand out and then the gun’s red flash, again and again and more, that moment now caught in history when they came for him.

Jimi Hendrix’s guitar wailing through speakers on my way to grocery store today, howling so long ago about     oh say can you see     bombs bursting in air – he never could have known it was bombs and bullets here and now,  brown people   black people   white people, running, screaming, dying, all wanting so much more from that frozen day, in all that once white snow.

But then through the blood and the shock, the one who fell, was pushed down—the legal observer quietly rises, stunned and cold, yet rises and together we become the risen.