“My Own Skin” by Kelly Kaur
Kelly lives in Calgary, Canada. She has been published in The Best Asian Stories 2020, To Let the Light In Anthology (Asia), The Best Asian Poetry 2021, and The Only Question Project: Ulyanovsk UNESCO City of Literature; had a story nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022; and had a poem in the North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival -Traveling Exhibition. Her poem "A Singaporean's Love Affair" will go to the moon on 2 separate NASA missions: the Nova-C mission to Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon (June 2022) and on the Polaris mission to the Lunar South Pole (2023). Her novel, Letters to Singapore, by Stonehouse Publishing, will be out April 2022.
The five-year-old unravels at home, sobbing from the incongruous assault at his pre-school. His holy hair desecrated, the proud mark of his heritage. A pair of scissors in little, lethal, young bully hands. targeted. terrorized. terrified.
The teenager tastes the gritty sand on the hostile ground of small-town Alberta. Assorted angry fists mercilessly pummel his head, face, neck, torso, groin, hips, knees, shins, ankles. Ferocious feet kick in the nooks and crannies of his twisted trunk. Petrified. He wears his palms like an inept shield. Barely sufficient for twelve hands and feet that furiously flail his trampled soul. Mocking monkey sounds infiltrate the cool April air. No promised refugee sanctuary. Bruised and battered, the young man stays barricaded in the impenetrable prison of his fear. they made me afraid to wear my own skin.
The poised and polished Asian lawyer sits in the comfort of his car at the corner of a busy boulevard in Vancouver. He rolls his window down to distinguish the yelps of the men in the car next to his. Their vicious words wallop his peaceful existence. Slurs suspend like muck in mid-air. His window repels the tossed bag of trash. “shame, sorrow, vulnerability.”
Two young women in hijabs attacked at a park a young Black man assaulted at the bus stop a Vietnamese woman slashed with a knife at the mall a synagogue desecrated a Sikh man shot on his driveway while washing his car go back to where you came from bullets ricochet through mosques, temples, synagogues, churches heads bowed in ardent prayers fervently seeking peace & love a family of five Pakistanis viciously mowed down at the traffic lights on a serene Sunday evening by a man in his eerie shadowy truck one lone child survived forever orphaned by hate
Still
Still
Still in the silence
We dream of roving ancestors
travelling descendants’ dreams accumulated from all bends of the universe
Of the endless race for unanimity
Of tender words to dress profound wounds
Of the magnificence of diverse shades and vivid tongues
Of colorful hearts that love indiscriminately
Of discordant minds that connect peaceably
Of anthems of courage and love
Of accents that chant a chorus of harmony
I am honoured to wear my own skin
I am privileged to wear my own skin
I am proud to wear my own skin, eh
