What do you think when you see that girl walking across the street?
With her head held down, eyes forward, feet flat on the ground, the hijab covering her head full of disparaging thoughts?

Raised with resilience, and beaten with slurs

She cowers at the 5-syllable, 14-lettered scorn; Discrimination

The word reminds her of the taste of tears

Salty, bitter, lonely

Along with a distanced memory of a war with herself
Agony, despair, misery

She says in prayer

Subhana Rabbiyal A’la, How Perfect is My Lord, the Highest
Just how perfect is My Lord when I can’t cross the street without wandering eyes, fearful eyes, watchful eyes fixated at the color of my skin which he gave me?
Eyes which visually assault my being with slanderous statements
Terrorist, raghead, towelhead
Words piercing through her skin
Like bullets in a frenzy
Silent anger oozing out of her skin
In the form of blood
But it doesn’t matter
Discrimination is a curse
A curse unable to be lifted
Unless
Everyone treated each other the same
With equality, with justice, with love, with fondness
And if this were the case
Imagine the number of lives that could be with us today
Lynchings, the holocaust, armenian genocide
Just some examples of race turned upside down
How many more holocausts,
How many more genocides,
How many more deaths do we need
Until we can see
That discrimination is a curse
That the young girl walking across the street with the bright purple hijab
Was shot dead
Simply because she looked “different?”
And when her mother cries at her daughter’s funeral
Demanding reasons as to why
And when her father cries at his daughter’s funeral
Begging God to take him instead
And when her baby brother looks in his sister’s coffin
Wondering if his fate is no different
Maybe then we’ll see that she was no different than everyone else
That the “suspicious” bearded man has a family too
A family that labels him as loving and caring
Rather than scary and alarming
Maybe then we’ll see
Who the monster really is