The alarm clock sounded across the plains, over the water and under the bridges that were soon to become walls. America arose from her soft laden bed to a pang of fear and distaste in her stomach that resonated throughout her entire body.
It was the morning after.
The morning after a night that would become one of the most infamous in her life.
It was now November 9. The calendar showed that it was November 9, but inside her body, she only felt regression.
How could I have skyrocketed so far back in time with the actions of one night?
She continued to walk across the carpet. Her room was cold, but her body felt colder.
It was numbing.
It was numbing to know that no matter what she did nothing would change. Even if she continued to fight she was but a speck on a speck in the scheme of the world.
But she chose to fight anyway. She put on her make-up and her favorite sweater. She wasn’t going to let this bring her down.
As she drove to class, she saw glimmers of hope. People she knew who wore smiles of unconditional love. People who had courage to live through the most excruciating pain. People who fought for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.
She saw hope.
And when she sat in the classroom, in a building, on a campus, at a university full of endless opportunity, she realized that the education that flowed through the walls of this institution, that was not available to everyone—that was a privilege— would provide her with the tools to fight.
Weapons wouldn’t be the answer. Yelling and fighting and crying and suffering would not change the outcome.
In fact, nothing would change the outcome.
She would instead choose to change the outcome’s path.
To learn is to have a tool to fight all forms of evil and hate. To be able to jump into other people’s lives and understand that inmigración is not about jumping fences and stealing jobs. It’s about seeking refuge from a life of fear and horror. It’s about the only power you possess to give your children a better future--una major vida. It’s about standing up when you feel weak enough to lay down eternally but your bones tell you that there is more than what is laying on the floor. There is a sky and there is a place. There is a life that is dangerous and is scary and is unrelenting, but it is better. It is better than here.
To understand that being Muslim or being Christian or being Buddhist is not to be inhuman. To have a religion is not have a certain identity. You cannot be defined by the circumstances that surround you. “They’re evil," you hear, and “they will kill us all.”
But “they” are scared too.
It’s about seeing the vulnerability and being able to understand and love and empathize. To look beyond the religious and cultural differences to see that we are all human under the beads and cloth and smiles and fake smiles and worried looks. We are all human—together.
To understand that a woman’s body is her own. That she is the only person who gets to decide its future, its intent, its feelings. She has the power. She is in control.
To understand that she, me, we are equal to men. Her body does not make her different. Her body does not make her inherently one way or another. Her body is but a body. It is skin. It is bones. It is fluid. It is not a soul. It is not a heart. It is not her. She is what lives inside the body. The shape that has formed around her soul.
To understand that no matter what side anyone is on politically, America decides the future. America decides the future of una familia americana, who can live one day with happiness and hope and the next with a fear for their lives. America decides whether a person's identity is one of fear or of courage. America decides repercussions and actions and inactions.
And on that cloudy day, America chose.
America chose the choice that suited her anger and her fear. Her disappointment. America chose, and on that day, America cried.
America, unable to be defined, full of so many beautiful colors and shapes and sizes, cried.
She wept because she knew the consequences would be irreversible.
But after her eyes were dried of tears and her chest no longer able to feel the pain, what did America do?
America rose and she began to fight.
*This poem was created with a feminine voice, not to portray America or America's people as a certain gender, but because my voice is feminine, and that is the voice I know best.
