When my friends ask me what my father does,

I am the few that gets to say,

my daddy works a chocolate factory.

They reply with jealousy.

They see rivers of sugar and squares of delightfulness.  

Heaven to the touch of the tongue.

But what they don’t realize is

that willy wonka is fiction.

That perspiration falls from the forehead of a man walking through the deafening roar of factory machines.

That 90 degree temperatures are different from serene settings of candy forests.

That overtime hours paints dark circles underneath your once youthful eyes,

Streaks white over your midnight hair,

creases the smooth surface of your face that was once wrinkled only by your smiles.

The facade of happy children in suburban neighborhoods leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. As you conclude that

the taste of the American dream is fake.

My friends do not realize that six months ago,

when Kron 4 news casted stories of families crying over lost twinkies, and hostess cakes,

that you were devastated.

Forehead pinched between stressed fingers.

You wondered how in the world you would be able to support your family.

That after twenty years of spreading your wings like an owl,

working what they called graveyard shifts, because sleep deprivation drained years from your life,

you would become a small casualty in the world of corporate wars.  

You would become a pawn in the battle between men with black ties and men with blue collars.

Eliminated from the playing board, because, simply,

you were not important.

My friends do not realize that only a month later

you began to deliver drugs.

Pharmaceutical drugs. To the homes of the elderly with legs too feeble to get them past the front door.

Taking glances over your shoulders, while walking from car to doorway, in west Oakland

And you hoped, on a daily basis that you would not get shot before you are able to see your own daughter graduate from high school.

It was a job where you had to cross the smiling faces of elderly patients from your list; week to week.

and you would wonder, out loud, when your own time will come.

My friends. They do not realize that THIS is the life of an immigrant man.

That you had dived into the ocean, swimming towards the United States.

Desperately towards the statue of liberty.

Praying for opportunity, while the waves made from the yachts of affluent men, pushed you off course.

You flailed and you struggled.

And when the men with the black ties

finally threw a ladder off the side of the deck,

it was so you could cater Ghirardelli chocolates to his fancy parties.

My friends. They wonder why you are always so short tempered.

They do not realize that when you were my age,

while I ran towards finish lines on the track,

you were running from the bullets of communist soldiers,

That you tried to sail thousands of miles on a wooden boat to the land of opportunity.

Only to have the ricocheting bullets that seemed,

to almost bounce of the water of the rice fields behind you,

chase you back into the jungles of Vietnam.

Into the serpent filled grass that rose to your waist.

Into the poverty and frustration that seemed to scream...

just like the silence of the four windowless walls of the communist jail.

And you survived, only by allowing the echoes of dreams and opportunity,

to whisper into your ear.

My friends. They do not realize that you are looked down upon because of the accented English that rolls, unnaturally off your tongue.

They do not realize that your back slumps from the weight of sacks filled with the residue of bombs dropped, with precision,

meant for your family members.  

My friends do not know what it means to work at a chocolate factory.

Filled with hundreds of men just like my father.

Who have traded one war for another.

Who have had their respect washed from their bodies during their swim towards Angels Island.

Guided only by the hope, that somewhere along the way, their next generation will laugh more often than cry.

With the echoes of dreams and opportunity, whispering in their ears.

My friends do not know. That I learned how to dream. From you.