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By Shiloh Capiak
Shiloh Capiak is an English major at the University of California, Berkeley.
open letter
i hope that
someday
the guilt angrily
gnaws and claws
at your chest
as a beast gnaws
at its own leg
for freedom.
i hope that
someday
your granddaughter
will ask what you did
to stop it,
the violence
of oppression, the
persistence of hatred.
i hope that
you will have to tell her
that you stood back, watching,
waiting, as if
nothing occurred but
the rise of a blazing sun.
the whole time,
it was in my throat.
i hope that
you hear my cries
and you may begin
to understand
that you caused this,
you,
with your vincible
shield of
religious righteousness.
as women
bleed out
in empty parking lots
like the hope
that drained from
my face,
you will understand that
you were never right.
you were never just.
you were loud,
you were evil,
you were quiet,
you were oppressive.
and someday,
when that black ghost
comes knocking at your
cranium like
the great wave of
anger you unleashed,
you will cry
and you will plead,
and you will remember me,
me,
who begged you
just to open your jaw.
11.6.24
i am tired
of pretending
that a lack of
grief
is strength.
i am scared,
i am afraid,
i mourn,
i cry wails of difference,
i despair.
when will we admit
that we are tired of being tired
that sometimes
there is no light
to turn off the dark?
but still,
our hands slowly
pick up the
dark
and carry on.
that is strength,
that despite,
that because,
we fight
and we try.
