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Emily Dissanayake

Bullet Points


TW: mention of death, violence, and murder


On July 24th, 1983

Sri Lanka fell

They call it Black July

Streets were wrecked

Stores were raided

Tamils were murdered


My father was ten.

He witnessed the hatred

He tells me his stories

The stories of the crowded trains

Desperate to escape

He tells me of the fear

Of the people

Trapped in a massacre


I remember these stories

But


Forty years later

And across the world

My history class began to cover South Asia

And on one slide

There was one bullet

For my people and their blood.


I remember feeling struck

Looking around the classroom

I realized that I was the only one that knew

About the mobs and the massacre

The bombs and the blood

The genocide.


I felt small

I felt weak

Against the shadow that had swallowed

The history of my country

It was dark and ignorant

It refused to remember the ravished


Simplified versions of history can erase

An entire people

Real history demands details

It demands truth

It demands.

It demands blood.


It forces us into reality

The reality of those people

My people

It forces us to remember

Because we can’t afford to forget


 

Editor(s): Chris F., Leandra S.

Photo Credits: Unsplash





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