Image courtesy of Dean Oliver
Written by Audrey Wu
I watch the sunrise
each morning at the Lincoln Memorial
It is barely winter
only late November, but there’s a quiet
eeriness, a hint of knitted frost
blanketing
our sleeping nation
I watch the sunrise
and wonder what they saw when they built this
what they would have thought of someone like me
an American, who belongs to this country
as much as it belongs to me
as much as the men on those rusted copper pennies
yet theirs are the faces immortalized
theirs are the names memorialized
I watch the sunrise
but it is creeping closer and closer still
the curtain is drawing
and through the tilted blinds
the light seeps through.
The ground can’t be green
when our “Fathers” spilled the blood,
crimson with each golden glare of the afterglow.
When will you see that
this nation, tucked into its silken sheets
stays stained?
When will you acknowledge the
scarlet blotches of the past
scattered across the doilied pillowcase?
I watch the sunrise
once more as the red glare reflects upon me and
glistens upon the marbled ivory shell of Lincoln.
Our nation is not
rose-colored but red in all its gore and glory.
It is time we wake up from those silken sheets
in time to see the sunrise
while we still can.
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