on silence

this is not the story of forgetting your language.
this is the story of how your language forgets you.

how it fades from your memory in the night

and is disappeared by morning,

this careless lover,

this silent betrayal.

once, i watched my grandmother cough violently,

her whole body an earthquake,

and i remember how i stood in silence,

unable to find the words to ask her if she needed a glass of water.

the words i practiced in front of the mirror

unable to battle their way from behind my lips,

& the genocide of my country happened all over again

buried underneath my tongue,

the blood spattered inside of my cheek

i knew the syllables but i was afraid

afraid that my mouth would fail my ancestry

that i would make a mistake in front of my family

and i would be proven a fraud,

my tongue already too colonized,

too tired to hold the weight of my country

when i was younger,

i wished i could have inherited this language,

been born knowing words wide enough to cover oceans,

instead of being left to drown in U.S. waters

with nothing to show for my heritage but shrapnel of war sprayed across my facial features

and a longing for a country that i knew nothing about

it is hard to find a home

somewhere between the united states and south korea

and it is exhausting trying to tread the currents in between

my mother asks me to proofread her e-mails before she sends them

because she knows that we live in a country

where when a white person spells something wrong, it’s called a typo

but when my mother spells something wrong, she should “learn to speak english”

being an outsider in the country you live in means carrying the legacy of your ancestral battle

like a weight in your stomach

means coating your tongue with war paint every morning

means having white people try to tell you about your own culture

means having your english teacher read your poetry and her only response is to ask if your mother was a mail order bride

being too american to be other, but too other to be american, is a constant fight between vocal cords and assimilation

but i come from a family of warriors

of women who learned to swim despite the tides

for brown girls who dare to be stronger than the currents they were born into,

the fight is never over.

& although i write poems for my mother

they are in a language that shut her

out of an ancestry that could be labeled anything other than immigrant

out of the right to a career dominated by white males

out of the feeling of having a home that welcomes you with open arms

and so, i write

i write because there is a wildfire inside my throat

because i’ve been trapped inside the drywall in my house for fifteen years and when i write, i claw my way out

i write because a teacher once asked me if my mother was a mail-order bride, and every word i speak is a protest

although my poems not written in the korean that i wish they could be,
the strength of the women who came before me still form every letter of my writing.

to be a poet is to break the silence.

is to tell the truth.

is to make your voice a revolution, always.