Growing up
I was told to never speak up.
I was told that voicing my opinions
would only begin a war of words
and violence
hurts.
I learned at a young age that I hated pain,
tripping on undone shoelaces,
scraping elbows and knees,
needing bandages to
make the sting go away.
So I stayed silent.
Passed the time reading books:
fiction, mystery,
history.
History books,
their pages filled with stories of
white men
stealing land without a second thought,
enslaving families and earning riches.
373 pages later,
a railroad is built
by hand
by hands of Chinese workers.
15,000 men,
15,000 buried stories
and for 6 years,
Silenced.
72 pages later,
My great-grandmother and her sisters
Have been enslaved
Kidnapped and forced to become comfort women
for Japanese soldiers
Living as objects, and nothing more-
I check the cover of the book again,
Because I thought I was reading history,
not horror
38 pages later,
The Boston Sunday Globe publishes a
“magazine of humor and stories,”
But I don’t find calling Filipinos barbaric humorous,
The White Man takes credit for turning
Barbarians into civilized men
When will this book tell me tales
That do not sound exactly the same?
How many pages do I keep reading
Of my people
Silenced, tossed around at others enjoyment,
Brushed under the rug until
our struggle becomes numbers,
Becomes normalized,
Becomes nothing?
When the stranger across the street yelled at me to go back to where I came from,
I stayed silent.
When friends mocked my culture’s traditional food,
I stayed silent.
When the president of this country replaced “corona” with “Chinese”
I stayed silent.
When the news showed videos of innocent Asians
violently beat and targeted,
I stayed silent.
Time and time again,
I have stayed silent.
We have stayed silent.
Bandaids don’t heal broken spirits, my people’s spirits,
this ache in my heart dripping, ringing our history.
121 years later,
a 92-year old Asian man is attacked,
shoved to the ground and tortured with racist slurs.
A young Asian girl is surrounded by ignorance,
punched in the back of the head-
they called her, “the virus.”
One page later,
nothing.
It’s a blank slate.
My people, we have stayed silent
for too long.
So shout,
yell,
heal,
cry,
write,
breathe,
love,
stand-
and never stay silent.
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