history a poem for my people

For the ones who couldn’t speak

Because a gun was jammed down your throat

Heng ot prap hey yay
“I didn’t say you can speak”
Or a knife was being held against your tongues
Heng ot yey dit
“You will never speak again”

For the ones who couldn’t speak
But just stare
At the decaying bodies floating down the Mekong River
Fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, infants..
The scent of rotten flesh, organs, and souls
A pool of our native people, killed by native themselves
To cleanse.
But instead of cleansing our land, we’re infesting our soil with blood.
Leaving no nourishment for our seeds to sprout. 

For every grain of rice that I still seem too look past.
Every time my mother told me it was “bap” to throw away any amount of rice.
Nam bay tong oh
Eat all your rice
She hardly speaks of when she was forced into the rice field
Work or be killed
Be killed or work 

For the monks, educators, musicians, and farmers.
We were the targeted ones.
For the ones who were forced to hide their identity and didn’t get away with it
For the ones who did get away
If someone had glasses like I did
Or read a book like I did
I would be dead like they are 

For my father- who knew an education was equivalent to a bullet to his head, so he ran away from home.
For my best friend’s mother, who had to sleep in a ditch among the dead just to ensure she’ll see tomorrow
Her father, a general slain by the khmer ga-hom with an apple in his mouth as if he were a pig

For the people of Southeast Asia, but not just Khmers.    
For Chams, Laotians, Meins, Hmongs..
For the two million un-rested souls
For the unidentified landmines and bomb casualties.
Children running playing tag, but find themselves stepping on the wrong home base.
All of us-
Striving to understand what went wrong. 

For the fine arts- apsara, coconut dance, and operas
Which was still kept alive after it was banned
Apasras still danced as free as water
The youth still come together and rhythmically tap coconut shells
Operas still sing of a time when Cambodia was great 

For one of the most powerful empires in Southeast Asia
And after a four year cultural genocide Cambodia still breathes
She inhales the beautiful lotus flowers blossoming throughout her land
She inhales the flute music
She inhales life 

She exhales the years 1974-1979
She exhales Toul Sleng
Because Cambodia isn’t genocide
Cambodia isn’t genocide
Cambodia isn’t genocide 

She doesn’t want to be known only for the mass killings that occurred on her land
She exhales red- removing blood from her soil.
Forgetting the khmer go-hom.

Cambodia lives
She is breathing and in out
Though she almost died 3 decades ago
But Cambodia has been alive since the year 600 AD 

For ancient Angkor- the largest pre-industrial urban center in the world
A city that supported a million people
Angkor Wat reminds us of the power Cambodia has 

Cambodia lives
She is breathing
In
And
Out 

She tells us of history
His-story
Her-story
War-story
We must tell our story.