Carrianne Leung | Issue 39

During the Genocide (A list)

I try to find language

I read histories of occupation and land theft

I post things on social media

I am challenged

I receive threats

I am told that I am being watched

I read some more

I go to protests

I find others who see the same things I do, and I cling to them

I find others who choose not to see

I am bewildered that it’s a choice to not see

I have nightmares

I have been lied to by people appointed to tell the truth

I have been betrayed and so have you

I watch the world become reconfigured

I watch power reveal its true faces

I witnessed

I witness

I find out there are other genocides happening simultaneously to my regular life

I do the groceries, the laundry, feed my kid, walk the dog, go to work

I see pictures of children without heads, limbs, bodies tore apart

I do more laundry

I have more nightmares

I am a coward and sometimes, I try to be brave

I post more on social media

I go to more protests

I talk to people who say nothing about this hell on earth and so I don’t mention it either, but I still feel the flames and wonder why they can’t

I can’t stop thinking about Hind

I become afraid that I will forget Hind and all of them

I discover that the price of living in these times is amnesia

I am not living

I no longer know how to be human

I no longer know how to talk to you.

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Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and educator. Her books include the Wondrous Woo and That Time I Loved You which was awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2019. She is currently working on a new novel, titled The After. 

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