Amanda Gorman’s “For Alex Jeffrey Pretti” arrives not as a calm reflection but as a reckoning. By turning to verse instead of punditry, she gives shape to a grief many are struggling to name: the horror of watching institutions meant to protect life become agents of irreversible harm. Her poem doesn’t simply mourn Pretti; it interrogates the fracture his death reveals between communities and the power that polices them.

As vigils, protests, and demands for an independent investigation intensify, Gorman’s words offer neither easy catharsis nor tidy answers. Instead, she insists on the hard work of collective care: refusing to look away, insisting that empathy can be an act of resistance, and daring readers to imagine a country where accountability is not the enemy of safety. In a moment thick with outrage and fear, her poem becomes a fragile but determined place to stand.