Me In The Eyes of 2020

By Mengnan Lin & Selena Beaumont

Two perspectives on 2020, a year of change, growth, tragedy, and conflict.

Mengnan
I’m not a perfect student who
Can sit still in front of the never-tired computer for 24/7
And be on top of every assignment

I’m not a perfect friend who 
Has a thousand different ways to 
Cheer my friends up when they are in great sadness

I’m not a perfect older sister who
Has endless patience to 
Cook every meal with different recipes
Answer every question which might not have an answer
For my also vulnerable little sister by myself at home

I’m also just not a perfect human being who
Has growth mindset embedded in their body
And can be optimistic 
Whenever a challenge pops up

I’m weak
I try to be strong, act strong 
And tell myself that I am strong, but
I AM WEAK

I’m a child of silence that
Make me a fairly good listener
Who is empathetic to embrace 
All the smiles and the scars

But not this time
Because when I close my eyes and listen
I hear tremendous noises from every corner of 
the world crying, screaming, 
begging for hope and changes

“I hate 2020!”
“Grandpa! Grandpa! Please don’t go!”
“Mom, I want food.”
“Is there any more masks left at home?”
“I’m sorry, but I really can’t lose this job!”
“When can I go back to school?”
“I promise I will pay the rent as soon as I get a new job!”
“2020 is full of disasters!”
…… 

SHUSHHHHHHH
I open my eyes with tears and
Cover my ears with all my force
“Jie Jie, what are we eating for lunch?”
My little sister comes into the room and 
Sees me trembling
She doesn’t ask anything, but just
Runs to my side and hugs me tight
“It’s okay, it’s okay.”

It is not okay, baby
But it’s okay to be “not okay”

It’s okay to have missing assignments
As far as you catch up with them
It’s okay to not know how to console your friends
As long as you are spiritually by their sides and support them
It’s okay to lose your patience with your siblings sometimes
As long as you give yourself a little more patience and love
It’s okay to be imperfect or temporarily pessimistic
As long as you are still looking forward to tomorrow
To the beautiful, hopeful things that will happen tomorrow
To the beautiful, better self that you will become tomorrow

Don’t worry,
You are ON TIME.
You are ON TRACK.

Selena
The men in front of me are white.

This is important in the story I’m about to tell. I go to deli at six a.m. while the sun debates whether it will rise to find two people ahead of me where there should be none in the crevices of early morning. Two men three times my size, identical in a way that doesn’t matter to me with strangers, similar enough that I notice the way the slightly younger one examines the older one with the same mimicry a child looks at their parent. I say that I am a person who cares about the details that make another person, but not before the caffeine stakes my heart. In the turn of the giant fabric of our collective story, these men would mean little to me, as many of them do, but they open the thin lines of their mouths and out comes an accent so Frankensteined, my head threatens to snap from my neck. It is an accent that beneath the patchwork of racism, is the accent of the echelons of my family. It is the accent of the five men who work behind the counter, men who have watched me grow up over the decade, between cups of French vanilla, who crow my name in chorus upon entry in that beautiful accent, chittering away in Spanish while I stand on my toes to shove dollar bills in their tip jar. It’s the same accent that sharpens across the stove in the back while it weaves through distorted orders—“Turkey and jam on rye; mini bagel scooped out toasted two shades darker than you,” one lady says. It is an accent in the mouths of these men that sounds like a nasally secret, not meant to be heard, the skittering laughter that follows turns my hands to stone, and I will the rage inside me to be silent. My mother says that I have enough anger to burn down a forest, that my birth and the sign that defines it embedded in the sun was destiny, that my words unfettered could kill the soul of a person, so I learn the grooves of the top of my mouth, sentences dying behind the seam of my teeth, while the men in front of me straighten their faces, placing their order with a cool ease that hollows out my entirety, stepping out of one body and into another. This is a poem about the consistent hum of such consistent people in the narrative of my life that keep it stitched together. This is a poem about the many women who live inside of me, begging in moments of conflict to scream.

Performance

Process

Mengnan and Selena routinely did creative introspective prompts to explore the many emotions that come with living during quarantine.