Two Hundred Thousand Women - 올리비아 피츠 (Olivia Fitts)

Olivia Fitts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tplzj9q7qY

 

Two hundred thousand women

                                                                           By Olivia

 

Two hundred thousand women

Two hundred thousand women

Hurt, exploited, coerced, trapped

Kidnapped, killed, and blamed

Two hundred thousand women

Violated, silently enslaved

Positioned at “stations” to be hurt

again and again

Will years of denial and a reluctant apology

Make up for all of the pain,

The fear and the sorrow

It’s not just about dignity, it’s about

The human right to live freely;

Twelve whole years spent in misery

And they expect us to brush it off

I hope they remember the

Two hundred thousand women

Two hundred thousand lives in pain

As we do

Will they ever know how we feel?

Or understand our reverence and sympathy?

For the two hundred thousand women who

Sat through the pain, waited in

Patience and hopefulness?

I don’t think so

Maybe to them corrupting history and

burying their mistake is more important

Than owning up to it

Maybe

Maybe they call them “comfort women”

To hide all the damage done

Every single day for twelve years

Every so often I imagine myself in their

shoes

I imagine what it would be like if life itself

Was ripped away from me

My family, my friends, my dreams

Reduced to almost nothing

Would I push through like they did,

Would I close my eyes and power through

The toil and humiliation

I don’t think I will ever understand

That type of feeling; the feeling of being

Lonely, the feeling of constant unsafety-

I don’t think the Japanese soldiers

Did either

Sometimes I put myself in their shoes too

And I wonder what goes through someone’s

Head when they decide to hurt another

Human

Without a second thought

Is that all women are to them?

Something to use and throw away?

And even through the dark rain cloud of

misery

They made sure to wait for the rainbow

At the end of that storm

I ask myself, too:

“How can I be like them? How can I

Be as brave and patient as they were?”

How can we all

Stand as tall as those

Two-hundred thousand women?