"I Have to Speak Up" Paulyn Annor

I have to speak up and say something. No, I don’t.

These were the thoughts that battled in my mind as I sat still in my chair. The spacious classroom seemed suddenly like a restrictive cage. For two days in homeroom, the entire school was discussing President Trump’s recent termination of the DACA program and the impacts of the termination on the 800,000 DACA recipients in the country. The student voices that were spitting ruthless and charged words like “illegal alien” and “undeserving” into the tense air were beginning to dissolve as I inhaled sharply and fiddled with my hands underneath my desk.

Don’t cry. Girl, I promise if you start crying…

“Paulyn?” the voice of my teacher, Ms. Taylor, snapped me out of my trance. “What are your thoughts? You’ve been quiet over the past few days,” she inquired. The moment I heard those words, tears streamed down my face; I rushed to the front of the room and with trembling hands grabbed the sandpaper that was supposedly tissue. As I tried to gather my thoughts and slow my ragged breathing, Ms.Taylor scrambled behind me and placed her hand on my back. I felt fifteen pairs of eyes boring into my back and suffocating silence rang like church bells in my ears, causing my sobs to intensify...