The first time I witnessed cherry blossoms reflecting moonlight was the first March after I moved in

During day, visitors crowded the streets like mayflies

2 A.M. and not yet summer

My head was tucked inside the covers as I tried to recover the type of heat that surrounded the body but did not invade the skin, a heat that marked the majority of my childhood

Perhaps that would have driven me to sleep but some night drivers interrupted my efforts

It had recently rained, as I heard the sound of their car motors, I remembered peeking out a triangle of my curtain to the sidewalk lit by a few amber streetlights

Only bright enough to pair facts with imagined details

Moonlight fractured into marquis diamonds that adorned the cavities of the otherwise lonely gravel street,

where blossom petals chose to reside for the evening

I pictured tires’ imprinting small scars on the blossom petals that had been weighed down by rain

A soft swat knocks a glass

Upon hardwood, carefully spilling, displaying

Its crystalline contents and shattering

Liquid glass, spilling shards. Individual fragmented

Stars nebulate as

Diamonds come to litter a vast

Floor.

But there was no glazed glass resting on the floor. There

Were no spilling mirrors, reflecting the gaze of guilty souls, no

diamonds nor “Shattered crystalline contents.” Yet, they, the reflections

Remain, holding the empty entrancement of a hollow being, who

Does not hear music

Nor see fragmented stars.

Some say glass could not be helped

From being fragmented. “From life to death, the purpose of

existence is to learn to cope with an indefinite,

meaningless existence without ends."" they say. Animals

Exist to be consumed! Laws are created to be broken!

And the fragile, let even unbending wills be broken as well!

Or so they say.

Still, in an honest harkened heart, there exists the thought that

What is fragmented can be fixed, and what is

Capsized can be collected,

What is lost can be found. Glass comes to exist for an eternity,

Mirroring the expressions of passersby, who

Never fail to turn away at the sight of hollow eyes

Gorged with sadness?

The unbroken hollow mind set itself, mending fragmented

Stars, unspilling crystalline content, casting shards to a place

Where all the other broken beings wait at the end of their

Lives. Only a single silver slimmer remains

To tell the tale of one mistaken husk

Who softly knocked a glass.

White privilege.

Such a strange concept is it not?

But it is no stranger.

It is familiar.

It is something we learned to live with.

We learned

We learned to fit your definition of normalcy

Learned your language

Learned your holidays

Learned your customs

Learned your cuisine

Learned your dress

Learned your media

Learned to appeal to your everything.

You learned our nothing. Saw us as expendable, exploitable.

White privilege.

What is white privilege?

It is many things.

It is being told that we don’t speak the right language

It is being told our faces aren't what society wants to see

It is being told that we should go back

It is being told “wow your English is really good!” when we grew up here

It is people thinking we are all the same

It is overhearing “they’re going to make us all sick”,

while I wait at a Big White ski lift

It is being helped after the white person even though you were there first,

while at the self-check out in Safeway

It is spending ¾ of the school year studying European history, ¼ Ottoman Empire, and skipping the Asia Unit because it isn’t important according to a late-middle aged white male

while sitting in a Grade 8 socials studies class

It is being unable to take back or even get to know the traditions or culture or history of my family,

Having to use Google to learn about holidays I don’t even know I don’t know.

That is white privilege.

White privilege is expecting us to fit your normal.

White privilege is taking our food, our dress, fitting it your people’s desires and marketing it

selling it

without acknowledgement

without a second thought.

My young ears were taught the strange comments about “people like me” you made were normal.

I learned that you were the desired look and that I did not fit that.

I learned to draw you

instead of me.

It was all so ingrained that I learned that you are the definition

of beauty.

That is white privilege.

It is a Sunday,

And much work is due,

A math test is coming,

And a presentation too.

It is 3 pm now,

Many hours to spare,

Perhaps I could relax,

To mentally prepare.

It is 6 pm now,

Much time still remain,

Perhaps after dinner,

Before using my brain.

It is 9 pm now,

Little time is left,

And yet I still neglect,

The massive workload heft.

It is 12 am now,

The due dates draw near,

I shall not sleep tonight,

It would appear.

It is 3 am now,

All feeling is numb,

Stress is kicking in,

And my head beats like a drum.

I speed through the work,

Putting no effort at all

I just want to finish,

and sleep on the wall

It is 6 am now,

I’m basically dead,

My willpower is broken,

And I feel nothing but dread.

After some time

The work is complete,

My body is fatigued,

And to my bed I retreat.

In bed I slumber,

The feeling is nice;

The blanket is warm

And 2 hours should suffice.

At 8 I awake,

My body on the floor,

My shoulders are aching,

And my back is sore.

To school I arrive,

And hand in what I’ve got,

My work is trash,

But give a damn, I do not.

At my desk, I sit with weakness,

Something that I do too often,

My friends notice and they know,

That I have not slept once again.

I make a promise to myself,

One that I never keep:

“You must never again skip

That wonderful thing called sleep.”