Malachi Byrd is the winner of the 2025 DC Poet Project, an annual poetry reading series and open-to-all poetry competition produced by Day Eight, publisher of the Mid-Atlantic Review. Day Eight is publishing Before We Gone by Malachi Byrd Fall 2025. A book launch reading for Before We Gone is scheduled for Saturday October 11, 2025.
2045
The year is 2045 and I am the last native left in D.C.
A man on a bullhorn tells me
I have 3 minutes to evacuate or they’ll open fire on me
And this gives me a sense of pride
because death can’t scare someone
whose home has vanished before his eyes
but I knew this day would come
I heard that if you scream at the top of your lungs
in the city you’re from
that breath will circle the earth
and catch you when you need it most
So I pray this poem
be planet-sized propellers
that prevent my people
from being pushed
across the Potomac
And I vividly remember
how the big neighborhoods
were the first to go,
how the place I learned to read
became a Trader Joe’s
And yes the city was rough
but we triumphed despite our pain
And looking back
I would’ve told us to be scared of
dog parks
Starbucks
and bike lanes
This poem started writing itself in 2012
when Southeast didn’t have a trauma unit
and Ward 8 victims were pushed
to the bottom of the call log,
In 2022
when somebody told me
that they were from D.C.
and they were really from Waldorf
And what seems like a microaggression
is actually the difference
between ruins and a renaissance
Language
is the reason you hear violent and criminal
and think of Southeast
before you think of the Pentagon
This place
is not parsley for your plate
not an instagram caption
not a revolving door
not a pit stop
not a detour
It’s not even the nation’s capital anymore
Because no amount of capital
can unbound the blood bond
I got with these blocks
the soul ties
we got with these streets
The year is 2045
and I am the last native left in D.C.
Muriel Bowser is on her seventh consecutive term
Martin Luther King is now Wall Street
Skyscrapers lace what used to be
the heart of the South Side
and this big chair is all that I got left
So this city,
I will 1965
riot for it
ride for it
‘cus what is a city
if not the people
that died for it
My body belongs with my people
it was never for audit
dump your mortgage
you do not own this land
just because you bought it
Remember I
will always be the boy who repped his city like a state
Remember I
was the congas that never lost they crank
Remember I
was the native that didn’t bend nor break
Remember I
Remember I
Remember I
died for the place that gave me life
Addendum
Upon second thought
ain’t no block or plot
that deserves my blood
No neighborhood
that has earned my urn
and as much as I love this city
I do not know her anymore
The love of my life
took my lemonade and made lemons
took my sacrifice and made it sour again
And before I was down
to be martyr and miracle
to stand firm in my final days
but now I know
that my city
is not a place
it’s punctuation
on a life sentence
the slur in my accent
the congas in my crank
And sometimes it’s easy
to get lost in the nostalgia
remember the revival more than the repast
remember what my grandfather was
instead what my grandmother does
When I say I would give my life for the city
I mean the coroners will crack open my chest
to a knot of Northeast
hear Overnight Scenario
when they cut me open
But the place I once loved
is no longer
a barrage of buildings
it’s a moment
an amalgamation
of what was and what could’ve been
My city cannot be gentrified
because it is not a place
it is a people
a purpose and a point to prove
and when they set the soil for the skyscrapers
I knew my height wasn’t holy enough
So yes
the cranes won
the construction crew
carried us out
and the outsiders got their way
But even when
Malcolm X Park
becomes McConaughey Way
Marion Barry
becomes Musk Manor
when this country decides
I am more rebellious
than resource
We will live
without buildings
without boundaries
without blood
You can have this land
I pray my dead makes your daffodils dangle
I hope our candles light your picnic
I hope you love it
I hope you love it
I hope you love it
Until the land
decides to love you back
the way it loved us
Time
Black people don’t never be on time.
It’s me, I’m Black people.
I don’t care if it’s your birthday,
Your baby shower,
Or your bachelor party
Malachi…. is going to be a bit behind
I promised that I would try to be punctual
and I was being honest
but I went to a Lauryn Hill concert on Thanksgiving
and she didn’t step on stage until Kwanzaa
and that’s when I knew I too had a problem
I have nightmares of running away from hands that only reach 12
succumbing to secondhand grandfather clocks
and becoming a pendulum that never swings back
Black boys look blue in the moonlight
but every shadow is Black on a sundial
and I just do not want to die.
Especially before I learn the person I’m supposed to be.
Really, I do not want time to run out of me
But truthfully,
I have a toxic relationship with this timeline
Somewhere between my mother
who had me at 16
and me not making enough money to have a child until I’m 60
Somewhere between the early bird gets the worm
and as a boy of a dying breed
I never want to wake up and stare at the soil
I used to think that when you got older
you finally understood how the world works
but really I think the monumental moments massage the urgent out of us.
I always wanted to be the young parent
that knew all the songs at the kids’ party
The cool chaperone that could recite the latest raps
Without embarrassing the kids
But let’s be honest you become embarrassing
the moment you make an embryo
So no, I don’t care about knowing the newest dance
I want to be 100 years old doing the oldest dance imaginable
This whole time I thought that I was running out of time,
but really I was catching up to it.
I am learning to be on time
That I can be both poem and prompt
Both punctuation and punctual
I proclaim here and now that I will walk into the sunset
I will walk step by step into the afterlife
with all of my breath and all of my composure
but more importantly, that day is nowhere near
I am breaking the generational curse of the sun setting at 2pm
Screw being a lawyer or a doctor I want to be ancient
I want to be a Morgan Freeman meme
I want to be the everlasting everglade
that sees the world change over and over again until the last day comes
More than a writer I want to be a relic
Lorraine Hansberry only lived to the age of 35
so I will age until I am a Raisin in the Sun
The world used to move fast
then it slowed down now I want it to stop
I don’t want to kill time I want to be on time all the time
in line with the life that is supposed to mine.
Malachi Byrd is the 2025 winner of the DC Poet Project, a competition that identifies and supports exceptional poets. The artist known as MalPractice is a poet, teacher, battle rapper, songwriter, and arts advocate from the District of Columbia. He is the former youth Poet Laureate of Washington, D.C. and a graduate of Princeton University. A full-time artist, the author has taught in over 100 schools in the DMV.
Featured image in this post is, “Murals in the Anacostia neighborhood of SE, Washington, D.C LCCN2010642116” by :Highsmith, Carol M, licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
