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Salam Baba and Amar!
How is the army authorities treating you?
Are they nonetheless attempting to kill my activist mates?
Are they nonetheless on the lookout for me?
Does the sound of gunshots at 2am nonetheless frighten you?
Or are they now simply background noise?
(Just like the music from my brother’s pc.)
Are you continue to having nightmares, Amar?
Is everybody protected?
Should you want me,
I’m solely an ocean away.
(Please let me know.)
I’m okay. Don’t fear.
These inexperienced ghosts can’t hang-out me anymore.
Right here in America, I don’t have to cover.
I solely have to fret about employability.
Right here, issues are going again to regular.
People nonetheless can’t pronounce my identify
and I’ve made peace with it.
I’ve mentioned passive revenue with
my classmates in fancy bars.
I’ve realized to stroll previous homeless folks
and never really feel accountable.
I’ve develop into a person.
I’ve realized to say, ‘How are you?’
and never imply it.
I’ve picked up on American idioms
and laughed on the idiocies of American society.
I now not ask them
to decelerate once they converse.
I now perceive nearly every part they are saying.
I’m now calling soccer ‘soccer’.
I’ve realized ask ladies out on dates
and had my coronary heart damaged on the bench
of my favourite park. I now know the very best
locations to have ‘brunch’. I now say ‘eww’
with an identical facial features.
I now meditate.
(Don’t fear. I received’t develop into a Buddhist monk.)
I’ve realized to punctuate my
despair with out remedy.
I now go to the health club.
I now breathe—
slowly.
I now know the wrestle of an immigrant.
I hate antidepressants and I’ve had them.
You’d love Christmas right here.
It’s lovely, however my insomnia
all the time takes me again to Burma.
Each thanksgiving, I’ve a good friend
whom I all the time go to and she or he’d all the time inform me,
‘You’ve an open invitation
to our home anytime, you recognize.’
I do know she genuinely meant it
as a result of she didn’t say it
in a superficial American manner.
Being receptive to like is a brand new talent
I’m now studying to accumulate.
Do not forget that time all of us cried for weeks
when our beloved Pluto was killed?
I’m planning to get a tattoo of him on my left ribs.
(I do know you hate tattoos,
however I do know you liked Pluto.
So please forgive me.)
I don’t miss Burma
however I miss our household dinners
and my sister’s pleasure.
Subsequent time we converse on the telephone,
as a substitute of what number of occasions I’ve prayed,
can we speak about my poems, Amar?
Would you be completely satisfied for me?
Do stars nonetheless sparkle in your eyes
while you speak about me, Baba?
(‘My son could be very sensible, you recognize…’)
Do you continue to have the American Dream?
Can we return to the time while you
carried five-year-old me in your shoulders
at your favourite concert events?
Subsequent time we meet
I’ll maintain you tight in my arms and
let you know how a lot you imply to me.
However for now, I’ll reply to your messages
with smiley cat emojis.
And love-react to all the images
you ship me of cats you rescued
from the streets.
I miss you
from my petite and overpriced
(however very protected) bed room in America.
Your eldest son,
Than Toe Aung
Washington, DC
December 4, 2022
Than Toe Aung is a Burmese Muslim poet and author residing in exile. He began a poetry motion in his hometown Yangon in 2016 and his activism has targeted on ethnic and spiritual minority rights, democratic values and free expression. He has studied comparative politics at Yangon Faculty of Political Science, gender and sexuality at Central European College, and sociology at George Washington College.
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