Don't Rip Her Apart
Excerpt:
"Like every immigrant who has arrived searching for Liberty’s stare, I was torn at the roots. A child placed in a foreign jungle where I reassembled the pieces of my broken identity anew – defiant against white stares and warbled taunts spoken in languages I grew to understand. My child-self did not know about the CIA-fueled coup d'état that had wrecked our democracy years earlier, placing a pint-sized dictator with a whiny voice in charge. Killing. Torturing. Sowing fear. My parents stayed thinking it would get better. (Hoping it would get better). But, ten years later, thousands more poets and singers died. The echoes of their words prickled in our ears, swelled in our throats until we were on the brink of imploding. And, so, in an ordinary hour on an ordinary day, we escaped to America with our dreams packed inside our hearts."
"Like every immigrant who has arrived searching for Liberty’s stare, I was torn at the roots. A child placed in a foreign jungle where I reassembled the pieces of my broken identity anew – defiant against white stares and warbled taunts spoken in languages I grew to understand. My child-self did not know about the CIA-fueled coup d'état that had wrecked our democracy years earlier, placing a pint-sized dictator with a whiny voice in charge. Killing. Torturing. Sowing fear. My parents stayed thinking it would get better. (Hoping it would get better). But, ten years later, thousands more poets and singers died. The echoes of their words prickled in our ears, swelled in our throats until we were on the brink of imploding. And, so, in an ordinary hour on an ordinary day, we escaped to America with our dreams packed inside our hearts."
"Don't Rip Her Apart" was published in Stoneboat Literary Journal.
Copyright by Eneida P. Alcalde 2020
