I must write

We must create 

and must never stop. 

My community is being terrorized. It is both devastating and familiar. 

My mother has served our local government for longer than I have been alive. I have always been proud to know this. Now she goes to work and straight back; she tells us to stay inside.

When we were younger my brother and I had bike races throughout our neighborhood. The adrenaline from the freedom to go wherever we pleased made my pedals turn faster and faster. Now he has escorts walk him to class. 

I have always been enamored by my friends and their lovely hearts and their dedication to serve people in need through their work. Now my friends are losing their jobs. 

At eleven, I remember helping my father study for his naturalization test. We would high five when he got the correct answer; me the teacher he the student. I was so proud. Now to my ears my father’s accent sounds thicker than it ever has. 

After I called my loved ones this morning I sat alone in my room, hundreds of miles away and cursed the world. My feelings turn violently from sadness to anger to fear to hatred. 

I feel outside of myself completely. 

This country’s soil holds my ancestors’ souls; we are walking upon the terrain of a post-apocalyptic reality, so no wonder I have been struggling lately to feel grounded. 

I scream at the ceiling of my apartment, thrashing violently to get a hold of anything that can anchor me. 

And that is when I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror. 

my face my flesh my blood circulating through my body– 

all irrefutable evidence that love always prevails. My hands from my immigrant father, my nose from my grandfather’s enslaved great great grandmother, and my cheeks of my indigenous grandmother ground me back into reality. 

I exist. I exist. The life they have all lived so that I can look upon myself with pride, so that I can look at myself and also see them. So that I too can know that

Love Never Dies.