What happened to us here? What happened to the big, beautiful, collective us we call United? Did evil, apathy, and cruelty leak in, or were they here below the surface always? Do they grow like seeds because we water them? Why are we the watering cans now, the fountains that soak the soils of inhumanity, of gracelessness? I don’t have any answers but I know this: Few of us here began here, the few that did, we immigrants decimated and destroyed, pushed into tiny corners of earth, bordered and patrolled, and told them to make a life again, told them we belonged here, told them it was ours. We that remain are immigrants, all of we, so hold no illusions that entitlement is a possibility, a right, and we have a statue on our shores that speaks, no sings, to the foundations we thought we began upon. Give me your tired, we shout, give me your poor, give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe Free, we proclaim. We sing on copper tablets held high above the sea that we, these United States, are the golden door that leads home to the homeless, the tempest tossed, we’ll lift our lamps beside it. Our lamp died, a flame extinguished, and we replaced it with a bulb, then a new light burning batteries, only this does not illuminate, it spotlights, interrogates and shines bright into the eyes, it lends darkness to the space between a mother and her child, separated and removed, divided for policies of a man we allowed to steal his way into power. Were our voices stolen too, will we allow them to remain silenced in the face of this? We must rise, and rise again, we must link arms, United, against the injustices of these days, we must call the senators, write the letters, hold the signs, donate the money, use our voices, and Speak out against what we are becoming. We must fight, and fight again the tide of inhumanity, stand for those who are kicked down and held there. We must shout, not on copper tablets on towering statues, but with our voices, tired, scared, combined. Above the doorway in the Kilmainham Jail, words of rebellion ring, “Beware the Risen People who have Harried and Held, Ye that have Bullied and Bribed.” Beware us, for our storm is coming.
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
annaxmalina
gummygunk
izzy806
germansingergirl
janainaart
vaporwave
origamiaround
