Day 2
BREAKTHROUGH
By Darlene Elias …
Darkness is prevailing. I cannot see.
Shock waves through the body. It is surreal.
Disbelief it happened again. Can we get a do over?
What we are doing is not working. Dismantle, knock the walls down,
find another way out.Overwhelming feeling of helplessness, it does not want to go away.
Love is all I want. I am not hurting anyone.
Can I get a witness, one that has something to say.
Ancestors rolling in their graves. Ancestral cries
deep from within.Breathe, breathe, one, two, three, four, I am coming for you.
My Puerto Rican Mommy is beautiful. Our children are beautiful,
Black or White, Gay or not.Breathe, breathe, one, two, three, four, hide, don’t open the door.
I don’t want to play hide and seek anymore.
Boogeyman, misogyny, racism, we are no longer going to let you win,
or take away what we have worked so hard for.It is 2024, it is surreal, that we are still playing the game of hate.It is time to turn the light back on, to see what we cannot.
YOU ARE NOT THE MASTER OF ME.
Darlene Elias has been selected as the 2025 Emerging Writer Fellow by the Straw Dog Writers Guild. She is an emerging writer and poet from Western Massachusetts. Darlene is a Hawaiian Boricua Anti Colonial Feminist who uses literature, poetry, and spoken word to elevate and validate her own experience as a woman in the United States.