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CHILDREN ARE BORN TO BE HAPPY
Santiago, Chile

BY Paulina Larenas-Bajwa

Picture
Severe Anisocoria is a neurological condition
a brain dysfunction caused by an outside force/a traumatic brain injury
a silence,
an absence,
a shot to the reasoning
to a fifteen year old teenager,
to a student in tenth grade at the Liceo Consolidada Dávila
Población Pedro Aguirre Cerda 

Geraldine, the schoolgirl in question
writhing in pain/twists
babbles her name
bleeding head
losing tone
wasting life
half an hour elapses
while in caring hands by the Brigadistas
supporting from the outskirts of the Dignity Square

The girl Geraldine
her brain exposed
forgetting by the second one by one her faculties
the mother she had, the father she has
the many houses and rooms she lived at
the day they walked searching for a cheap dormitory
the night she slept in a car with her father
the siblings she cared for and their expectant faces
her own expectations in the pulse that comes and goes
the unsettling hour when the girl,
dazzling eyes
remain closed.

Over the subway’s turnstile we jumped! Dad I’m not alone,
I’m careful dad, we are so many!! We accomplished something Dad, this fight is mine too
You are so young my daughter don’t go, you shouldn’t be in the news
the lifeless young girl the next morning, the story badly told in some newspaper,
not you my dear one!
The girl shot in the forehead by a government agent,
ninety degrees at thirty meters distance the cop who shots you not you
sitting on the curb losing consciousness
the brains exposed not you daughter
My wasted silence, the fear, my own youth of terror
don’t go out, don’t say, don’t complicate things
they will kill you daughter
I saw this in my childhood, I did

Infancy stolen in inequality and deprivation is the inherited story
by the father, by the daughter
by all of those who have woken up because it’s enough
a 30-year nap ends here because it’s enough
enough with being neglected by the government, enough of being the bastards of a rotten system
it’s all these days of fighting, 78 and counting and will not abate
the girl, the father
in Pedro Aguirre Cerda
or at Liceo Consolidada Dávila
where its external mural reads:
“Children are born to be happy”  ​
Picture
Geraldine Alvarado. Courtesy: CIPER Chile.

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Sol de Medianoche is a monthly publication of the Latino community in Anchorage, Alaska