Dear Daddy: Reflections from NYCUP

Day 29, 30, 31, 32 & 33

I have not written in 5 days. A lot has happened. Helping kids. Trayvon Martin. Watching Father of Lights. And now, as my 4 R's: Rest, Restore, Resist, Repeat... I give you: "Dear Daddy..."

Dear Daddy,

I write this as a monument to myself.

As if I could organize my thoughts

from the endless expanse which

is the mind you so generously gifted me with.

A little twisted,

With a touch of dark.

A quick slap of reality,

to enforce my prolonged habit

of being the one who could handle all that.

Maybe if I could look back and see

that the little girl in me

trying to be tough and fighting her own battles

has still been stuck in that 4-year-old’s body.

God, can you hear me?

When I whisper dark thoughts and dirty stories

based on historic fiction not good enough

for a movie but perhaps a few SVU episodes maybe.

I claim to have  b r o k e n  shackles that society put

on me, my father, my Ammachi,

the Patel Brothers down the street.

But then I see the degraded beggar  f l  i   n   g    i n g

filth at the structured society,

and plead to the invisible status quo:

“Please don’t let him touch me.”

Why not bring it back “home”?

Where the normalcy is engraved,

in tainted blood mixed with European ethnocentrism.

Looking past the quarries,

the stones built on blood and unclean water.

Where some long lost cousin or sister

breaks rocks to provide for each other.

Perhaps if I step back from the colored lens

which I claim to be made in Spain.

Though even if I could speak the language

I would only hear and listen to

ay mami chula, tu quiere estar conmigo.

Still, we both trough back to the dark closeted world,

the one I broken down and burned.

Yet it is the scars I etched myself in my thighs,

knowing that the world past these arms

cannot even understand the lies

a little girl of a brown world

was told by a man breaking the very laws

he preached so dispassionately about.

And yes that girl saw more treachery and sin

than she ever should have known.

Though to that girl,

it was not as evil as it should have been.

Now a   de       c  a  p  i  t  a  t  e  d  heart  lingering

in a body made of glass and bones.

You can see the inside of me,

only when I’m shiny and clean.

So, why do we trek down this path, Lord?

When I gave it away and burned his pictures

in the imaginary grave I buried him,

along with the decision I long spent ignoring,

of how prejudice and anger keeps me at bay from the

children right down the street:

the white Jewish brethren that

are clearly too good for me.

When I claim that Long Island is a

place I stay instead of as mission field no one roams.

Ready and willing to IGNITE flames in hearts

of those disenfranchised and  f   o  r  g  o  t  t  e  n.

When I should know better

that money does not equal happiness.

And worse is done when those

with it cannot understand those without.

I cling to the child that cannot come home

to both mother and father,

yet I myself went home to an empty house

where everyone resided.

When I see the cursing and fighting,

and frown only to recognize

the hand laying the beatings.

A pinkie engraved with a ring of gold

and a cross of diamonds,

the same fist that slaps a girl down for

being too provocative

when she herself is sold by the mass media

to mere boys dressed up as men.

And I think to myself,

maybe a purge is just what we need

to exercise our crazy

our anger and selfish beliefs.

But Lord, I trust in you

or at least that is what the dollar tells me to do.

Therefore I need to be the good Christian

opening doors and saying my liturgy.

And yet the Holy Spirit cannot find me

or call me home.

Because I let sin stay too  l  o  n      g

that it doesn't even pay rent now but takes

it out from the deposit in my soul.

Empty and empathetic,

I act out in disgrace.

This face can be named so many things:

A privileged child of immigrant hands,

making  her way in a broken land.

A starved "artist"

that cannot even hone every word

she says into a sonnet that b-r-e-a-k-s bondage.

An activist only active where the action is.

Misunderstood but not mistreated,

only to her own eyes is she bleeding.

Another girl t/o/r/n from a place of

peace because she trusted too heavily.

Sure, girls run the world,

but it is not running the world they do

but  r u n n i n g  from it.

Because the same girl that parties too hard

so that the boy she twirls around would consider her

something quick and easy,

wakes up the next morning

crying and heaving up the very toxins

she thinks will fill the h.o.l.e.s in her heart.

But they say you gotta play this game called LIFE,

even of that means she becomes a dancer/singer

with three kids and no man willing to call her wife.

I refuse to let that be what "normal" should be,

not I nor the great NYC

or any other country.

So I want to CREATE a place where girls become women,

but not out of makeup and false face.

Through grace and the fearlessness that comes from

being a true princess to a real king.

Taking every b/r/o/k/e/n body and letting that story,

become an artistic performance to my college community.

Each photo and poem, each story and smile,

I want to define the daughter of Christ that makes

all of humankind sublime.

Where men realize that

their b\r\o\k\e\n\n\e\s\s is not in their

bodies but in their minds.

And women realize that =cat= calls are for

animals and they are greater than that.

When a father realizes a father is

more than donor but a lover.

And mother is not just another

word to describe caretaker.

Where, as a great man once said,

(In a broken paraphrase, I claim:)

If just enough people realize that people are

not just people but to be just people,

people have to bring justice to all people.

These are my hopes and wishes,

dreams I offer to His will.

A prince of a kingdom that I happily will serve.

So here is a long poetic response

to the men and women who keep telling me:

I’m worth it.

That God has paid my debt to Him.

That I know my p.l.a.c.e in history.

I am not another s|t|a|t|i|s|t|i|c to be pitied.

Or another face to be ignored.

A |billboard| to pay a tithe to,

so that we can leave our concerns at home.

My name if Princy,

and I am \b/r\o/k\e/n\

bleeding maybe still-

But that blood that f:l:o:w:s out of me

I put into every word

Every move of wrist

To every colored drawing

In every lyrical wish.

I am not ashamed

I am loved

I am His,

He is mine.

Dear Daddy,

Thank You…

 

For loving {me}.

 

I never truly called my God...Daddy...but sometimes, I gotta let Him love on me.

He does it either way; I just need to accept that He still wants me.

Will you do it too?


Princy Prasad is a student blogger from the New York City Urban Project, directed by Jonathan Walton. These reflections were originally posted on her blog, princynycup.blogspot.com