To My Muslim Friends

I am sorry you are caught in this whirlwind of ignorance and hatred.  I pray you know that those participating in today’s marches are not representative of the heart of America.  May you be wrapped in love and safety.

America

Where was your heart when your feet carried you to cast a vote for darkness and hatred?

My father was in a prison

my mother mad with grief

I was fourteen going on a hundred

When I took my seat on a KLM jet headed for freedom.

Freedom that dictated I couldn’t sit in the back of a bus with my black brothers and sisters and they couldn’t use my water fountain.

Freedom that allowed hooded cowards to burn crosses and wreak havoc with young lives in Meridian Mississippi shortly after I arrived.

I got confused with the juxtaposition of the statue of Liberty and the burning crosses, the private welcomes and the public signs that read: “We don’t rent to dogs or Cubans”.

But I wanted to think we were healing.  I wanted to believe in our summer of love and our years of apparent transformation.

Until young black men’s bodies appeared bloody on our streets.

Until white cops laughed their way out of court.

Until “lock her up” shocked me back to the coliseum, back to the chants of “Paredon!” in my beloved Cuba.

Until….

you walked your feet to a voting booth and unleashed our collective ignorance and cynicism, our misogyny, our racism, our madness, our Jungian shadow selves locked into the body of a man child wounded narcissist to whom you handed the dagger that has mortally wounded the blind lady who once welcomed us all.

And here we are…