when i was growing up
Poetry by Janna Datahan
there was a superstition my mother
passed on to me and my sisters she said that when things break the shattering of a ceramic plate a stone chipping a window the sole of a shoe separating after a hundredth step it was the ancestors’ way of saying we saved you from a worse fate of a broken bone a crash a heartbreak and maybe even death but what do the ancestors mean when our bodies break instead of objects like the six women who bled to death from bullets that pierced them as they were mending other people’s bodies with their hands the old man who was pushed during his daily morning walk his head hitting the concrete hard he died two days later or the man who was slashed with a knife in the face from ear to ear on his way to work a scarred smile on his face for the rest of his life is it because of our love of cheap fixes and our obsession with discarding things that the ancestors are telling us we have to break everything in order to save ourselves to break the idea that our women are dolls you can toss after you tire of us our bodies absorbing bullets and fists like an unwelcome embrace to break the idea that our people are a virus that claimed millions of lives to shatter the idea that we are a monolith that my heartbreak from the boy with china blue eyes is not the same heartbreak my sister received from the girl with flaming hair and freckled cheeks i want you to know of the fear i have in my heart as i walk into shared spaces my brown body transformed into a trigger of hate from people who do not know who i am or what this body had endured i want you to know this fear is mine it is also my daughters’ my sisters’ my mothers’ my grandmothers’ and everyone who may not speak the same mother tongue as i do but share ancestors who watch over us as we break things in petition for their protection our bodies weary and burning with intense fever of fear |
About the Writer
Janna Datahan has been writing poetry since she was seven years old. She has since moved on from writing about trees to her experiences as a single mother and an immigrant in the United States, as well as occasionally writing pieces about American boys who break her heart. When not writing, she is usually sword fighting or crocheting.
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