I know you won't hear me. If I use the exact tone that my anger warrants, you won't hear me. If my shrill screams are released And they resemble the beast that lies in my heart for you and your disregard of my family you won't hear me. As I stand, wrapped in this American flag weary from wading through water filled with feces, anguish, remnants of neighborhoods where I once played I know you could never understand how my hands, arms and legs are sore from swimming and touching dead infants using them as life preservers. This isn't the first time the shoulders of the dead have saved my life. I had no idea that once again I would depend on the strength of the dead. The ancestors said to me as I swam That they were with me. They whispered to me to keep swimming. Each time I grew tired and felt my arms would not continue on, I heard “be strong” and another human raft brushed against my arms.
And I am here.
Unable to convey to you exactly how I got here. Mere words alone could never tell of the journey that did not have to be. Mr. President, you forgot about me and as I stand here and listen to you politicize and trivialize my reality in this Land of the Free with our Homeland Security you left me to die and the word “why” keeps coming to my mind but the ability to speak is getting harder and harder to find and all I am capable of doing right now is screaming the inaudible how could this kind of betrayal be humanly possible? But at that moment I swallow my rage and let salt water pain inhibit my ability to see Because when it comes to acknowledging my existence You do not see me.
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