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The Awakening
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by Jessica Hyejin Lee
My pillow was where I laid my head
After days of mindless academia
My mind running in dyslexia
I passed through the classroom doors and school bells
To the goal named Disillusion
Where my parents were ever-working ghosts never appreciated
My pillow was where I imagined
The future, where was the future?
In an American dream where the parents' bones are worked to death
Sweat, blood, bones, and time
Sweat, blood, bones, and time
Where the only things parents are proud of are
Their children who become American holding hands with the people who laugh at their parents' accent
And the new brown leather sofa they just purchased
That matches the silver Victorian picture frames, long orange candlesticks, lilies from the garden,
And all the adornments they put on one by one
As they worked their jobs and built up these bricks one by one
And what would happen if they were taken away from that house?
9 years, 3285 days of work to build this household founded on love
And the fear of being torn away from this
The sweat, blood, bones, and time
The sweat, blood, bones, and time
Their bloody tears!
My pillow was where I shed tears
In the middle of the night I couldn't sleep
When my mother's swollen ankles as big as her love for the family
When my brother's eczema as red as his youth
When my father's depression as deep as his isolation from society
Had no room to be diagnosed
Lost in the... vacuum of information, where are the doctors, hospitals, or health insurance?
Does it matter?
Time will not heal
Time is only a measure of loops of capitalism, exclusion, abuse, enslavement
Tic Tok Tic Tok
Capitalism, exclusion, abuse, enslavement
My pillow was where I did not lay my head
Bulging veins in my fist high up, I revolted
Look into my stares like a sharp bloody knife
You will no longer lie
My shouts will ring and crack the ground like an earthquake
Into EXPLOSION! Fire! Fire! Fire!
See the Truth
Fear does not cross the border
Handcuffs are an accessory that shine like diamonds on my wrists
The history of revolution is engraved behind the bars
This ice castle is as cold as hard metal blocks
Fingernail writings like dental drill pain
Paved onto the metal wall 'God will show'
And dreams of freedom, Paris with the Eiffel Tower scratched onto this metal wall
Yet so far away. This is a prison cell in Philadelphia city jail
It reeks with smell of urine. Yours, theirs, or mine
No dignity
Or is this an initiation to join the revolution?
No room for humiliation
No pretense of cigars, champaign, and pearls of Great Gatsby charade
Rise up! Revolt!
The truth is too big to comprehend: tears and blood, and bones, and times
Its explosion breaks the bars apart, consumes the guards and the concrete building,
It burns radiant white
The ignorant can eat the ash.
I'm still on a bus glancing through the world
Swaying with the movements of the bus and the sound of the engine
The next person's newspapers still talk politicians—white noise
But I have opened my eyes.
