What if we celebrated family reunification not caging humans like animals? What if we had a parade for salad today instead? For antiracists who eat salad. What if we paraded an ideology that doesn’t kill? Would you show up?

You simply represent a past version of me, self-hating and hiding from what is real; and so I give your pain back to you, because it does not belong to me.

It is the age of friendship. Maybe instead of “are you married,” we ask, “but have you found your people?” Maybe instead of, “is a baby in your future,” we ask, “but does someone help hold your heart when it breaks?

I deserve every drop of poison I am fed, and my shield of indifference does not reflect how I crumble inside like stale bread. The butter substitute I am given at home does not piece me back together, and I am left a beating void.