Posthumously?

Ominous, flashing lights in the rear view mirror resembled the flickering glow of the cherry at the end of her cigarette, crackling with illumination as she caged the nicotine vice in her lungs behind the bars of her cartilaginous ribs. She slowed her car to a crawl and pulled over as she took another drag off her smoke and killed the engine. With the head gripped between her fingers, she reached for her cell phone on the passenger seat as she rolled the window down with her free hand. Three minutes felt like three days as she waited and wondered the cause of her coming under the grip of the law.

Hanging in the stale, summer air were the loose rings of smoke, dissipating slowly from her presence, but quickly replaced as she inhaled another puff in hopes of taking her noncompliant anxiety prisoner. Smoking was how she’d always calmed her nerves and as the image of the black-leather-shoed officer approaching her door drew nearer, she drew a deep breath, pursing her lips as she inhaled; coaxing her nerves into a nicotine fog. Each of his footsteps echoed as an armament of purpose and authority against the blank brick wall of the unknown. New to town, but not naive, she swiped the home-screen on her phone where her thumb quickly found the camera app, followed by a swipe to the right to move the photo function to the red ring marked “record”. Cold ashes fell before the feet of the lawman as he began with his directives.

*******************

Breaking News.

Bold, red and white headlines flashed across television screens displaying the image of the young woman who had been arrested for failing to use her turn signal and refusing orders to extinguish her cigarette. A single snapshot of one’s daughter who had been found three days after being incarcerated, lifeless, hanging in her jail cell. One final record of a moment in time, she, dressed in orange (whose once youthful, bronzed-mocha skin was a shade of raw-umber mixed with blanched-gray) posed for her mugshot.

I (along with countless others) couldn’t look at Sandra Bland, who appeared to be inhaling and holding her breath, and see the blank stare of her dark-ringed eyes looking through me without asking the question, ”Was that photo taken after she had died?”.