Little Carlos Nava, here you are — memorialized on this wall in the straining light that comes from the rising sun as it lifts its head straight over East 14th. Do they know, that even his grandmother, as she stood frozen in that horror of that day, did not notice that you had fallen with the bullet in your body? Not until it was too late, and her screams were mixed with the screams of everyone else. It was 1 pm.
I pass this spot every day, as I drive towards the rising sun to work. There used to be candles and teddy bears and a large picture of you on a makeshift poster board — the largest memorial I have ever seen. And then it was cleared, and there was just the Little Ceaser’s sign. I remember when I walked there a year before, asking the owner to donate pizzas for the 5th grade graduation. That was not too long ago.
Now, that sidewalk is the altar on which your face appears in a mural of remembrance. It first came up as a sketch, though we all knew its intent. And each day I drove past, its presence materialized with each new stroke of color. Little Carlos, you are the angel that watches over the long stretch of this street — a vigil that is night and day, a reminder that is everything sobering in this reality. Your face is somber, and from behind your head, rises the wings of a Monarch butterfly, that survivor, that wanderer. The orange and black morphs into feathers of stone and we know your memory is as strong as the statue of the Aztec god in the corner of your mural. In your hands, you hold a sign, small and humble that reads: One Village.
I am only a beholder of all of this. I do not understand death, or how it is that it was you who had to find death. I only know that the young bear so much of the weight of this breaking world. I know this. I am sorry.
