#familiesbelongtogether (2018)
The night I was born, there was no rally. For months my mother cradled me and I grew smaller. In hiding, we were both becoming ghosts. Oh to be alive in a country of dead ends. Before my 100th day, she traded. She would become the ghost and I could become the girl.
She handed me to a social worker, who handed me to an orphanage, who handed me to korea, who handed me to a foster mom, who handed me to a volunteer on an airplane, who handed me to the parents who raised me, here, on the other side of the pacific. It is my duty to not forget my mother, who needs me to remember the woman she was. All of these are my family. They belong together.
There was no rally when my son's father first kissed me. Those days he ran out of breath, just looking at me. With him my heart had no border. He used to wake up and tell me his dreams. In them, he was always running.
The night there was a rally, I tucked my son in for bed. His hands are my hands, my mother's hands. His smile is his father’s smile. Because of this, they are always together. He is still too young to know he is a protest. My son understands the language of loss, but he doesn’t speak it. Today while thousands marched, he was just a boy who went fishing with his grandpa. I rolled a blanket over him, a soft tide, the smell of the sea on his skin.
If anyone tried to separate us I would swallow the ocean just to shipwreck them. I would cut off my hands so that nothing could pass through them, I would cradle my son with my teeth. I would raise every end from the dead until they could not find us. I would run forever and I would never break eye contact.
We would not sleep, we would not become ghosts, we would remember