Her Bijî

I’m exhausted. Tired of all the lies,

All the words you spin into this web that’s somehow supposed to protect me from the world out

there.

I know, I know you wanted the best for me. For your daughter to be safe.

safe from both sides:

from the hatred in your own country because our ethnic minority group was there first

from the hatred in this new land because we weren’t there first with the colonizers

but you still could have told me.

you could have...

... you could have been so many things:

proud of your culture

the one who i’d go to for questions about my history and people

but instead, i cannot

i don’t open my mouth and utter the burning questions of mine,

because i know somehow, somewhere inside, it makes you uncomfortable

so i turn to whoever else i can, screaming a desperate plea

[ tiktok, instagram, DearAsianYouth, discord, my literal AMERICAN history teacher that

knows nothing about west asian history ]

i grasp at every bit of knowledge, every bit of culture, of community,

because i have none

because you, my idol, my role model, have said nothing

because we play the game of assimilation

and somehow I, the one who rejects it, has the privilege to be victorious, to assimilate