I was a little girl once
Dressed in pink from head to toe
I
had curly blonde hair, big eyes, a small nose.
I had this unquenched,
thirsty curiousity for the world around me,
And I believed in
the goodness of people.
I walked down the stairs on day
In my middle-class home
To find my middle-class mother
Crying
on the phone.
I looked up into her middle-class, tired, frustrated, overworked eyes.
I wondered who had died.
It
seems she was talking to someone from her past,
A friend of a friend from her graduating class,
Who she hadn't spoken
to in a number of years.
My middle-class heart couldn't understand her tears.
"We were talking about John Lennon,"
she said,
"Who was shot outside his apartment. Shot in the head.
And about my ex-boyfriend who took his own life,
Cause
he couldn't deal with the heartships, the challenges, the strife,
And cancer and lupus and hepatitis C
And all of our
loved ones who cease to be
And AIDS and world hunger, and poverty,
Do you see baby? Do you see?"
Now, I had never
known anyone who had died.
TV was censored. My mind purified.
HIV meants nothing, and Lennon?
Wasn't he that guy
from that band?
I looked up to my mother trying to understand.
She said, "people kill people. There's injustice.
There's war.
Death is just a part of life that you can no longer ignore."
My middle class eyes filled with tears
quickly.
My middle class heart broke right in two quickly.
My middle class dreams and hopes and aspirations shattered
and vanished quickly.
My youth had been stolen, like a rape victim cunt swollen,
It was lost, like virginity never
to be found.
I used to believe in the goodness of people when I was young, I suppose.
I now cut my skin, throw up
my food and drink too much, just trying not to explode.
How can I believe when there are planes crashing into buildings,
People
dying, their cries never heard. Muffled.
Simply numbers.
I'm not a child anymore.
I'm not naive anymore.
My
cunt may not have been stolen yet - may not be swollen,
But my mind is a battlefield trying to find justification amidst
all of this chaos.
I still have curly hair, big eyes, a small nose,
But now I wear my politics from my head to my
toes.
I'm still a part of a middle-class family,
And with all the injustice, maybe that's not such a bad place to be.
So
please, quit your complaining if your air conditioner breaks.
Think of all of those with their lives at stake.
Be happy
you're breathing, with no lumps in your breast.
Be happy your health-care is better than the rest.
So, be loud.
Be outspoken.
Fight as though your heart has never been broken.
Scream in the face of injustice.
Cry in the face
of poverty.
Speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves,
Because that's love. That's justice.
That's how
this world ought to be,
But isn't.
