Rights

The following was written as a response to someone who asked me what right I had to speak about the borderlands as a white Belgian-Canadian woman. 

What right do I have to speak? 

None, you say.

Yet I am compelled because there is a need here, 

an emptiness that drives me to speak.

I know it isn’t mine alone, 

but the only way I can feel it is to own it, 

so this hole in my chest belongs to me.

You might have one too, you might say yours is deeper

with jagged edges that prevent you from sewing the skin.

And you might be right because when I look at your emptiness, 

it eclipses everything that I’ve ever known.

Still, I ache. 

And you, because of your pain, your hurt, you negate me

saying my emptiness is irrelevant and my experiences white-washed. 

I am a façade and you the epitome of authenticity.

You might be right, but still, I ache. 

And it hurts all the more in our little community of emptiness

that includes by excluding, no praxis, no action, not yet,

where somehow experiences have become competitions.

But what right do I have to release these words into this world?

Are they wrong when they fall from my lips,

because my mouth is not shaped like yours?

Or is it because this body I own cannot produce the statement necessary

because my flesh is not strong enough, because I haven’t lived long enough,

because when you look in my eyes and see me, it’s easier to pretend that you don't.

It's easier to think that I am the ignorant gringa bent on capitalism, consumerism, 

destruction on every level, including spiritual ones,

that I am here to perpetuate a cycle of abuse spanning centuries.

What right do I have to speak?

Maybe none.

I am compelled, but I do not fit into the image of resistance that you have pictured for so long.

For you, I may have no right to speak,

but there is no right you have to silence me.