I lay in bed next to my sleeping husband. His quiet breathing in contrast to the small explosions of neighborhood fireworks. The talking and laughing of the Latino neighbors part of the breathing symphony of America.
In my hands I held the horror. I saw, replayed in my feed, scenes of mothers and fathers being torn from the grasping hands of their families, shoved into unmarked vans with no windows. I could hear the joy but a cold heaviness settled into my chest.
How could my fellow countrymen commit such heinous acts of cruelty? I was not the same after that. I could not sit with my comfortable life without doing something. In that moment, this poem was born. And, from this poem, Operation Honeybee was created.
Born for a Time Such as This
It’s not about red or blue.
Not elephant or donkey.
Not the tired tug-of-war
we pretend is democracy.
This is flesh and blood.
This is soul and spine.
This is my neighbor
ripped from her child's arms,
and I swear— I felt the tearing in my own skin.
Don’t talk to me about laws.
Don’t preach policy
while you shut the van doors
on a mother who baked birthday cakes
in your neighborhood for fifteen years.
Let me help, let me help, let me help.
I’m ready.
To hide them in my basement.
To smuggle hope in hollowed-out wagons.
To pass truth in paper scraps
folded into hymnals,
tucked behind soup cans.
To whisper freedom through walls.
Call it what it is.
Not strong leadership.
Not hardline border policy.
This isn’t politics—it’s fascism.
Giving it a softer name
won’t clean the blood off your hands.
And don’t you dare
drag my Jesus into this mess,
clutch your Bible in one hand
while you cheer as families
are chained and caged.
Jesus is not on your side
if you are on the side
of cruelty.
Be honest with yourself.
Can you look a father in the eyes,
six kids, a hollowed-out wife-shaped hole,
and say, this is God’s will?
This blacked-out van,
this metal box with no air,
this goodbye with no promise of return?
Have you stood in the Alcatraz cages?
Have you breathed that cold, echoing silence?
Then tell me, honestly,
can you cast your fellow man into that
and still sleep at night?
Or have you flattened him into a label,
less than human,
a statistic with brown skin?
Because I can’t.
I can’t sit in my clean house
on my soft bed
with my husband’s arms around me,
my children safe under this roof
and not scream.
How dare I?
How dare I bathe in warm water
while another mother
washes her face in fear.
How dare I rest,
when my people - yes, my people - are suffering.
We cannot stand by.
We, the beating hearts.
We, the ones who know better.
We, the children of the refugee King,
must not be silent.
I was born for a time such as this.
Not to spectate.
Not to rationalize.
But to resist.
So let me help.
Let me help.
Please, let me help.
KH - 7/4/2025
