Dear Daddy,
I write this as a monument to myself.
As if I could organize my thoughts
from the endless expanse which
is the mind you so generously gifted me with.
A little twisted,
With a touch of dark.
A quick slap of reality,
to enforce my prolonged habit
of being the one who could handle all that.
Maybe if I could look back and see
that the little girl in me
trying to be tough and fighting her own battles
has still been stuck in that 4-year-old’s body.
God, can you hear me?
When I whisper dark thoughts and dirty stories
based on historic fiction not good enough
for a movie but perhaps a few SVU episodes maybe.
I claim to have b r o k e n shackles that society put
on me, my father, my Ammachi,
the Patel Brothers down the street.
But then I see the degraded beggar f l i n g i n g
filth at the structured society,
and plead to the invisible status quo:
“Please don’t let him touch me.”
Why not bring it back “home”?
Where the normalcy is engraved,
in tainted blood mixed with European ethnocentrism.
Looking past the quarries,
the stones built on blood and unclean water.
Where some long lost cousin or sister
breaks rocks to provide for each other.
Perhaps if I step back from the colored lens
which I claim to be made in Spain.
Though even if I could speak the language
I would only hear and listen to
ay mami chula, tu
quiere estar conmigo.
Still, we both trough back to the dark closeted world,
the one I broken down and burned.
Yet it is the scars I etched myself in my thighs,
knowing that the world past these arms
cannot even understand the lies
a little girl of a brown world
was told by a man breaking the very laws
he preached so dispassionately about.
And yes that girl saw more treachery and sin
than she ever should have known.
Though to that girl,
it was not as evil as it should have been.
Now a de c a p i t a t e d heart lingering
in a body made of glass and bones.
You can see the inside of me,
only when I’m shiny and clean.
So, why do we trek down this path, Lord?
When I gave it away and burned his pictures
in the imaginary grave I buried him,
along with the decision I long spent ignoring,
of how prejudice and anger keep me at bay from the
children right down the street:
the white Jewish brethren that
are clearly too good for me.
When I claim that Long Island is a
place I stay instead of a mission field no one roams.
Ready and willing to IGNITE flames in hearts
of those disenfranchised and f o r g o t t e n.
When I should know better
that money does not equal happiness.
And worse is done when those
with it cannot understand those without.
I cling to the child that cannot come home
to both mother and father,
yet I myself went home to an empty house
where everyone resided.
When I see the cursing and fighting,
and frown only to recognize
the hand laying the beatings.
A pinkie engraved with a ring of gold
and a cross of diamonds,
the same fist that slaps a girl down for
being too provocative
when she herself is sold by the mass media
to mere boys dressed up as men.
And I think to myself,
maybe a purge is just what we need
to exercise our crazy
our anger and selfish beliefs.
But Lord, I trust in you
or at least that is what the dollar tells me to do.
Therefore I need to be the good Christian
opening doors and saying my liturgy.
And yet the Holy Spirit cannot find me
or call me home.
Because I let sin stay too l o n g
that it doesn't even pay rent now but takes
it out from the deposit in my soul.
Empty and empathetic,
I act out in disgrace.
This face can be named so many things:
A privileged child of immigrant hands,
making her way in a
broken land.
A starved "artist"
that cannot even hone every word
she says into a sonnet that b-r-e-a-k-s bondage.
An activist only active where the action is.
Misunderstood but not mistreated,
only to her own eyes is she bleeding.
Another girl t/o/r/n from a place of
peace because she trusted too heavily.
Sure, girls run the world,
but it is not running the world they do
but r u n n i n g from it.
Because the same girl that parties too hard
so that the boy she twirls around would consider her
something quick and easy,
wakes up the next morning
crying and heaving up the very toxins
she thinks will fill the h.o.l.e.s in her heart.
But they say you gotta play this game called LIFE,
even if that means she becomes a dancer/singer
with three kids and no man willing to call her wife.
I refuse to let that be what "normal" should be,
not I nor the great NYC
or any other country.
So I want to CREATE a place where girls become women,
but not out of makeup and false face.
Through grace and the fearlessness that comes from
being a true princess to a real king.
Taking every b/r/o/k/e/n body and letting that story,
become an artistic performance to my college community.
Each photo and poem, each story and smile,
I want to define the daughter of Christ that makes
all of humankind sublime.
Where men realize that
their b\r\o\k\e\n\n\e\s\s is not in their
bodies but in their minds.
And women realize that =cat= calls are for
animals and they are greater than that.
When a father realizes a father is
more than donor but a lover.
And mother is not just another
word to describe caretaker.
Where, as a great man once said,
(In a broken paraphrase, I claim:)
If just enough people realize that people are
not just people but to be just people,
These are my hopes and wishes,
dreams I offer to His will.
A prince of a kingdom that I happily will serve.
So here is a long poetic response
to the men and women who keep telling me:
I’m worth it.
That God has paid my debt to Him.
That I know my p.l.a.c.e in history.
I am not another s|t|a|t|i|s|t|i|c to be pitied.
Or another face to be ignored.
A |billboard| to pay a tithe to,
so that we can leave our concerns at home.
My name is Princy,
and I am \b/r\o/k\e/n\
bleeding maybe still-
But the blood that f:l:o:w:s out of me
I put into every word
Every move of wrist
To every colored drawing
In every lyrical wish.
I am not ashamed
I am loved
I am His,
He is mine.
Dear Daddy,
Thank You…
For loving {me}.
I never truly called my God...Daddy...but sometimes, I gotta let Him love on me.
He does it either way; I just need to accept that He still wants me.
Will you do it too?
