it is a talent and a curse

to know exactly what someone wants you to say...
to know exactly who they want you to be.
which is maybe why i felt so much for this poem.

After the Pyre

It turns out, what keeps you alive 

as a child at mid-century 

following your parents from burning 

village to cities on fire to a country at war 

with itself and anyone 

who looks like you,

what allows you to pass through smoke, 

through armed mobs singing the merits of a new regime, tooth for a tooth,
liberation by purification, and global 

dissemination of the love of jealous gods, 

coup d'etat, coup de grace, and the cooing of mothers 

and doves and screaming men 

and children caught in the pyre's updraft,

what keeps you safe even among your own, 

the numb, the haunted, the maimed, the barely alive,

tricks you learned to become invisible, 

escapes you perfected, playing
dead, playing 
stupid, playing blind, deaf, weak, strong, 

playing girl, playing boy, playing native, foreign, 

in love, out of love, playing crazy, sane, holy, debauched,

playing scared, playing brave, happy, sad, asleep, awake, 

playing interested, playing bored, playing broken, 

playing "Fine, I'm just fine," it turns out,
. .
now that you're older 

at the beginning of a new century, 

what kept you alive 

all those years keeps you from living.

-Li Young Lee