Hope Disappointed

Growing up in a country,

Where electricity is unreliable and the police are phony,

Where the armed robbers are just waiting for you to drive by slowly,

Where second-hand clothes were not just unusual but they were the only

Way to dress children if you weren’t in the government,

Being bribed and deceived the to destroy the establishment

You call your homeland

Where no one can stand,

Speak, or print against such lies

Without fear for their lives;

America sounded like a dream come true.

But the first day I walked into a classroom,

The eyes said it all.

            It was the first time I had seen colors other than brown in them. I froze in the doorway of the classroom with surprise at those eyes. I couldn’t even register the voice of the older woman in front of me, or what she said, but her blue orbs perplexed me. Her hands began gesticulating towards the desks, and as I turned, I was met with more confused stares. Although their surprise mirrored mine, specks of golden brown, ocean blue, and olive green swirled with anger, judgment, and hostility previously unknown to me. As I gazed into their irises, I received fear with a twinge of resentment at my presence, enough for me to make my way to the back of the room. Chair after chair I passed, and pair after pair glanced back, their owners slowly putting backpacks in the empty desks next to them. I slowly sat in the first empty row I reached. The eyes of the girl in front of me turned to give a disgusted glance before her entire row loudly scooted upwards. Frightened from this foreign unfriendliness, I shrunk into the last row of seats, looking up just in time to see the owner of an older pair of eyes quietly take her purse and put it in her previously open cabinet, locking it with a key.

Day after day, those eyes always remained the same,

But mine started to change.

Every word that was said against me,

Every joke, every jab, began to stab

My view into a brand new shape.

America sounded like a dream come true,

But it was where my nightmares began.

Day after day, I came home to cry,

To wonder if my ethnicity was my life,

Or if it was just there to ruin it.

The bullying, exclusion, and loneliness was getting under my skin.

I looked at the blade tip longingly,

Thinking that maybe one scrape would be enough to dig it out.

Or maybe a few more to take off this dark shroud

That was “only skin deep,” right?

I thought that the healing skin could turn white,

Or at least a light brown.

When it hit me that I couldn’t change the outside.

I left the sharp blade tip,

And grabbed the softer one of the pen,

To hopefully change what was one the

Inside.