FROM: Together We Rise: Voices from the Front Lines of Freedom
You will not take my friends.
You will not take their families.
You will not tell me who to fear.
I walk around in a world of color,
colors I can see,
but refuse to let define
my boarders of interaction.
I eat dinner with friends
at a Korean BBQ restaurant
in Koreatown,
Los Angeles.
A white man,
a black man,
Taiwanese American woman,
a Pilipino American woman,
laughing about past memories,
a drunken graduation night
from grad school, my friend
Kelly nearly throwing up
in my car.
I walk around in a world of color,
colors I can see…
I met a writer, Feroz,
in my Fresno State
MFA program,
who needed a friend
7500 miles from his home
in Kashmir,
his Muslim roots. He writes
about the atrocities of war
he lived through,
the senseless killings of the Indian Army,
a recurrent dream
where “the street is a litter of limbs
and stones and broken glass.” We grew close,
pushed each other as writers.
I refuse to let color define
my boarders of interaction.
If I had
I would never have the memories
with my first love,
a Chicana from Inglewood. The night
of my grad night, too tired,
exhausted,
collapsing on my bed,
our eyes shutting tight,
my arm draped snugly
across her torso.
You will not take my friends.
You will not take their families.
You will not tell me who to fear.
I will not succumb to your falsehoods
and lies. “Rapists and drug dealers” I
have never met,
but real people
with a beating heart,
with precious breath,
that speaks truths
I can more closely relate to
than anything you spit from your lips.
I will not
label them at all.
Brian Dunlap 