Her Bijî
Updated: 4 days ago

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