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| Kristin Collins with the letter her son Abraham Davis sent to the Masjid Al Salam Mosque (Fort Smith, Arkansas) in apology for his actions. Davis had driven his friend to the mosque on which the friend drew swastikas and curses while Davis stood watch in the driveway.—The New York Times Magazine, August 26, 2017 |
“I wake up and look in the mirror and I just think, ‘Who are you?’”
—Abraham Davis quoted in "The Two Americans,”
The New York Times Magazine, August 26, 2017
—Abraham Davis quoted in "The Two Americans,”
The New York Times Magazine, August 26, 2017
I don’t know why I did it, why I did most things.
I wanted to be bigger, harder to squash. I didn’t even
do the drawing, just drove my friends to where they
scrawled the broken-winged Swastikas. When the police
came, later, no one was surprised. In fact, we all exhaled,
the cell a hole my life had been funneled towards. When
I wrote the mosque to forgive me, I startled myself. I never
expected they would, instead, just wanted to answer
the ghosts crowding my nights. I wanted to show
who I wasn’t. They forgave me. Now comes learning
how to forgive myself. Every day, I look in the mirror,
and I think: Who are you? I look myself in the eyes.
Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat's Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more.